


Gifts of the Heart

by legendarytobes



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Deckerstar - Freeform, F/M, Post Season Four, Post Series, Romance, The Deckerstar Network, first time fic, valenteam challenge 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:40:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22741912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legendarytobes/pseuds/legendarytobes
Summary: After Lucifer returns to Hell to save them all, Chloe starts receiving the most unusual carved wooden spoons and other gifts back at her apartment.
Relationships: Amenadiel/Linda Martin (Lucifer TV), Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, Dan Espinoza/Female OC, Eve/Mazikeen (Lucifer TV)
Comments: 78
Kudos: 252
Collections: TDN's 2020 Valenteam





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> For The Deckerstar Network's 2020 Valenteam Challenge based on the prompts of "moonlit/candle lit" and also of "Welsh carved spoon."
> 
> For context this is what the carved spoons are like - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovespoon
> 
> Zee Arts (https://zeearts.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr is my partner and will be posting her illustration to Tumblr soon, and I'll like it here when she does :)
> 
> Okay, should be good to get on with the show...

He could blame Mazikeen for his newest hobby. Honestly, he could blame Maze for many things. The demon had helped lead him through endless eons in Hell and been a crucial companion by his side as he ruled over the endless ash pits. After all, naïve and broken Samael---who he most certainly was **not** \---would have had no idea how to deal with and rule the ruthless demons of his new domain. She had found him, had patience with him until he’d (mostly) healed, and taught him all she knew about torture and punishment. And together, they’d learned new things with energetic experimentation for the sinners whose hell loops they had domain over.

So, he’d been more than accommodating to take her up to the surface for a vacation. Honestly, Lucifer never needed prompting. After all, he loathed Hell and relished making things difficult for his pesky brother, Amenadiel. Besides, he was getting better at picking more and more remote areas to sojourn in, places that took Amenadiel longer to lock down. So, if Maze had decided to learn more about torture techniques from the middle of nowhere in Wales and within the walls of their stone castle, then so be it.

However, he’d grown bored.

While Mazikeen delighted in seeing all that the stocks could aid with. To Lucifer, once you’d seen one way to humiliate and incapacitate someone, you’d essentially seen them all. But once the public punishment for the local sheep thief had led toward lashes while in the stockades, well, there was no dragging his demon away from such visceral torture. So, as Lucifer was often wont to do, he left her there and wandered into the actual town to find a pub and a bit of drink.

He sidled easily into one closest to the harbor and ordered himself a lager. The barkeep at first widened his eyes at the gold coin Lucifer shoved across the bar, and he could understand that. He was overpaying quite a bit. But money he had, some of it smuggled down and hidden bit by bit in Hell. Some of his wealth was actually from investments he’d started back when banking had become chic during the beginning of the Renaissance, but gold was easy. It was direct, and it bought him enough loyalty to not be bothered by questions or suspicion.

So, even if he could have bought everyone’s pint with that one coin, Lucifer considered the exchange worth it for a bit of silence.

And for alacrity.

The barkeep shuffled back quickly to him, bringing a pint that had only a few motes floating in it. As far as humans went, it wasn’t better than say Rome at its heights or, Dad help him, Babylon, which he’d very much enjoyed, especially the gardens there. He was nothing if not nostalgic. However, the ale went down well enough, and it was better than the drought he was going to face for what would feel like decades or more in Hell before his next holiday.

“Thank you,” he replied, ignoring the way the barkeep frowned at his accent.

Perhaps his gold hadn’t bought that much. Sometimes, even now and with his gift for all languages, there was a bit of Enochian in his speech. Perhaps he should work on that, practice more, so when he came top side he’d blend in more easily. Worth cogitating over at least.

Lucifer took a long draught and looked out the window. The sun was still high, which meant that the bulk of the townsfolk of Cardiff were still enjoying the blood thirsty spectacle of the thief’s lashing. He could try and find the local brothel---they operated at all hours---but he preferred to keep money out of transactions, to work with someone who truly desired him and not merely his coin. He’d have to wait a bit longer until the crowd dispersed for supper, and he’d be free to seduce a maiden or a lad or both. Perhaps something rather large and involved with Mazikeen as well would hit the spot.

He sipped again and let his eyes rake over the scenery before him. Besides the barkeep and himself, there were two other patrons. A man, half asleep, stared at his stew at the far table, and further down the bar sat a sailor, who was hunched over and concentrating on something in his lap.

Curiosity was probably one of Lucifer’s chief sins, and he couldn’t resist poking his nose into others’ business. Besides, the seaman had a lithe build and a square jaw, and he was half-hoping that the sailor was engaged in something more lascivious than was likely. Maybe securing a bedmate for the night before Amenadiel came to hurry him away would be easier than he thought.

“Well, what do you have there?” Lucifer asked, putting as full a leer into his voice as possible.

The sailor blinked up and set a wooden rectangle on the bar before him. _Drat, then he was being and utter straight arrow_. “Wot?”

It was going to be a while before Mazikeen returned or more townsfolk were around to seduce. Lucifer supposed he could do worse than entertain idle conversation. Gesturing toward what he now realized was a partially carved plank of wood, Lucifer asked. “What do you have there, friend?”

The sailor sighed and set a carving knife down on the bar’s surface as well. “Hopes and dreams.”

“Looks like a bit of whittling, actually.”  
  


The seaman shook his head. “It’s a spoon. Well, hopefully it will be when I get to that end. Right now, I’m having trouble even getting through what I want on the handle.”

Lucifer pointed to the carving and inclined his chin toward the man. “May I see it more closely?”

“Feel free. I don’t think I’m going to make any break throughs in the knot-work tonight. It’s bloody harder than I thought.”

The Devil picked up the project and evaluated it. At the top of the rectangle was a dragon etched into a fine shape with its back arched high and wings flared out. Beneath it was a bell and then the beginnings of intertwined Celtic knots, but he could see the gashes in the sides of the first couple loops where the sailor had grown unsure of his work and accidentally gouged too deeply in his hesitation.

“I like the dragon, rather fun work that.”

And perhaps that was a bit of vanity. It was obviously _not_ about him in anyway. No one tended to make art or homages to the Devil that also involved anything subtle and normal like bells. See that crazy Bosch fellow and his not-completely-inaccurate garden painting. But he still favored dragon representations, even if they had nothing to do with him and his role as the great dragon of Revelation.

“Yeah, but it’s the knot work that’s hard. I start getting into it and feel like I lose my place.”

Lucifer shrugged and handed it back to the sailor. “And you’re doing all this for a spoon. There are easier ways to eat.”

“No,” the barkeep added, leaning closer to both of them. “That young squire clearly has found a woman he fancies, a lass who’s going to be the one. He’s carving her a _lovespoon_.”

The Devil was proud of himself for not breaking out into laughter. Lust existed. It was a great bit of sin fodder and led to more than its fair share of souls getting sent to his domain. Hell, lust fed his own desires and made for compelling activities both top side and with Mazikeen when loops grew boring. But love? That surely was a myth. He’d certainly never seen it. The less said about Mother and Father’s relationship, the better. But he’d hardly found Adam’s two relationships with Lilith and Eve, respectively, to prove that love was real either.

Idealized tripe.

That was the best one could say of so-called love.

However, the sailor was rather cute, especially with the way his blush already reddened his already ruddy cheeks. If Lucifer humored him, maybe he could get something interesting out of the encounter.

“Alright, and what is a lovespoon?” Lucifer asked.

The sailor sighed again. “Bloody hard to carve, apparently.”

The barkeep chuckled. “You should see the first one I ever made for the Missus. It was supposed to have a bell on it, but it came out looking like a blob if anything. Completely malformed. It takes time, lad. That’s what makes it the perfect gift.”

“Of love,” Lucifer worked hard to keep the derision from his tone but wasn’t sure he’d succeeded.

“Yes,” the barkeep continued. “You aren’t from around here, are you?”

“Hardly,” Lucifer replied. Smirking, he added, “I come from a bit farther south than here. Truth be told, _much_ farther south.”

“Well, in these parts, when a lad wants to ask a woman to marry him or, at the very least, swear loyalty to her, he carves her a lovespoon. It’s a promise of fidelity.”

Lucifer suppressed a shiver at the idea of just one partner for the rest of his interminable life. _How dreadfully dull_. Then again, mortals were such confounding creatures. “I suppose it appeals to some, that monotony. What’s the lucky lass’s name then?”

“Ceila,” the sailor replied, a dreamy tone overlying his words.

Lucifer soured a bit and started to hope fervently for dusk. There was no chance with the lad being as besotted as he was that Lucifer could seduce him now or ever. Well, technically he could. Lucifer could get _anyone_ in bed, but there was hardly any sport in it when the sailor clearly had a beloved he’d literally get endless splinters for.

“And the things you’re carving, one supposes have meaning?” Lucifer queried instead.

The seaman nodded. “Oh yes. The dragon is for Wales, since she’s a right proper Welsh girl. We’re both so very loyal to where we live, even if I try and earn my keep as a merchant sailor and see all over Britain. The knots are intricate and take time, clearly, so they’re to show my dedication.”

“Riveting,” Lucifer replied, hoping the sarcasm wasn’t dripping from his voice. The lad was incredibly earnest after all and his feelings on love aside, Lucifer always enjoyed meeting mortals with genuine passion. That was part of what made them so interesting, how deeply they cared. “And the bell?”

The barkeep grinned. “Oh, this lad has it badly for his dear Ceila. That’s a promise of marriage. You’ve started your first spoon with big ambitions, son. Good luck to you. I hope when you’re finished and give it to her that she says yes. Don’t fret too much about the details. If the lass is the one for you, she’ll say yes. It’s about the care and not the technique, son.”

“Davies,” the sailor replied.

The barkeep’s smile broadened and her poured pints for all three of them. “Then, traveling stranger and Mr. Davies, join me in a toast to young love. May your spoon find its mark, Mr. Davies.”

Lucifer lifted his pint because more ale was never to be turned down and echoed the cheer, “Here-here.”

He took a sip and then offered Mr. Davies a fake yet reassuring smile. True love was assuredly a myth, but if the young fool wanted to find that out the hard way, then let him at it. The Devil was, after all, nothing if not a true champion of Free Will, even when that came with blundering into mistakes.

And yet, there was something about the craft that intrigued him. Not the love aspect or the plan of giving a spoon to a beloved. Perish the thought. His most frequent partner was Mazikeen, and while he valued her company, they were hardly more than seeking to slake their lust. She was talented in all she did, but she was a companion, a bodyguard, and nothing more. Besides, the Devil ever in love? What a contemptible and ludicrous idea. However, the years that passed in Hell felt never-ending, and it was always so bloody long before he could sneak up for another taste of freedom on Earth. It had been centuries since any demon had thought to challenge his rule, and torture and even fucking only held so many rewards for him. Perhaps a hobby wasn’t out of the question.

Besides, Amenadiel might have bitched when Lucifer tried to sneak a nice bottle of malt Scotch back to Hell this time (and he had managed to last almost three days in Dad forsaken Cardiff before his asshole brother found him), but his brother had no care or qualms about Lucifer taking a robust log back to Hell with him.


	2. Chapter Two

Chloe didn’t notice anything for the first three months.

Honestly, it was hard to put one foot in front of another. She forced herself to get up in the mornings, get Trixie to school on the days she had her, and be a mom where she could. She still shuffled through work, reassigned now to be partners alongside Dan, who was beyond vocal with his feelings on Lucifer’s “permanent business trip for his Dad,” which was as good an excuse as any. But nothing really penetrated the fog she was in. She did things robotically because she had to, because life went on even when her heart felt like it had stopped beating. But it was like sleepwalking.

And the thing was, people let her.

Linda, Amenadiel, and Maze were busy caring for Charlie, who seemed utterly normal so far. Besides, there was this weird guilt that hung between her and the other Celestial insiders. Every happy moment the three shared with the Nephilim was only possible because Lucifer was trapped permanently in Hell as a bulwark against the demons. It wasn’t necessarily fair, but it tore into Chloe freshly every time she saw Linda smile at Charlie or Amenadiel talk about being excited for when his son grew wings. Made the hole in her life more obvious. Dan was worse, and she knew he was mostly bitching out of concern for her (and, okay, some out of the anger he was _still_ working through over Charlotte’s murder), but it got so bad that she and he agreed to only talk of work or Trixie plans and nothing social at all. Even with Ella…well, the forensic scientist tried, but her efforts at trying to cheer Chloe up hurt the worst.

Because Ella, after her year spent trying to avoid her faith, was back on the true believer boat. It was inherent in her sunny disposition and very nature. So, Ella kept trying at first to blather on about hope and faith and that she just _knew_ Lucifer would find a way back. Chloe had no way to explain how cosmically impossible that was, so she eventually found herself taking lunch at her desk and not in Ella’s lab and making excuses to skip Tribe Nights.

Of all people, it was her mother---bursting into her apartment much as Lucifer once had---one morning on a layover from New York to Vancouver to chew her out that also woke Chloe up. One sweltering August day, her mom let herself in, pulled out a bit of salad fixings from the fridge, and sat at the breakfast bar waiting for Chloe to rouse herself around the crack of four p.m. on a Saturday when Trixie was at Dan’s.

“You look like immortal hell,” her mother said.

Chloe glared at her mother and rubbed at her bleary eyes. “You didn’t let me know you’d be in town or in my apartment, and how do you even have a key?”

“Your old roommate gave me one during the trial a couple years back. She said that she didn’t want to be bothered by anyone banging on the door and to just have the spare.” Her mom just shook her head and bit into her lettuce. ( _No dressing, that’s where the calories get you, dear._ ) “I knew you’d do badly when Lucifer left. He is rather charming. I did not expect you to fall completely flat on your face.” Her mom chuckled a little and bit this time into a tomato. “Honey, you must have had it bad. You never looked this forlorn over Dan.”

That gave Chloe just a momentary bite of guilt. After all, Dan was the father of her child and the reason one of the best parts of her life was around. He just had been the far wrong romantic partner for her, and part of her would always be sore and angry from the Palmetto mess and its subsequent gaslighting. Everything had just been different with Lucifer. More. Both the good and the bad, and now that he was gone, it was like living in black and white. Being stuck in the static fritz of a dying, old-fashioned TV.

“I’m dealing, Mom. Lucifer had business he couldn’t get out of…his father is a very controlling type,” she said. And truer words could never be spoken about the God, capital “G.”

“Yes, but darling, you have bags under your bags, you are in desperate need of someone to touch up those painfully bad split ends, and you clearly slept in your work clothes. In a word, you’re a _mess_.”

She raked a hand through her hair. It wasn’t untrue. Maybe she could at least schedule a haircut; it was both so heavy and tangled. Hmm, maybe bangs this time around. “Thanks for putting such a fine point on it.”

Her mom set her plate down and sighed. “Honey, I’m worried about you. I shouldn’t rat someone out, but to be honest, Trixie texted me.”

Chloe swallowed hard, and it felt like glass was lining her throat. Of all the things in her life, the one thing she’d wanted to still be was a good mother. Obviously, she hadn’t been faking normalcy as well as she’d thought.

“What did Trixie say?” she croaked.

“She said that you weren’t sleeping, and that you seemed really sad. She asked me to take you out for the day, work some bonding magic with you. I can get to the set tomorrow if I absolutely have to.”

 _How generous and that sounds like the mom I know_.

“I dunno.”

“Darling, you have to wash that man right out of your hair. Line I stole from Rodgers and Hammerstein, but I was in quite the cruise show version of _South Pacific_ once.” Her mom sat a bit more still after that. “Seriously, I know what it’s like to lose someone you thought you might end up having as your partner for the rest of your life.”

“Oh, we hadn’t exactly…we almost made it to dating so maybe it wouldn’t have been like that.” And that was the rub because even if they’d been good as a couple and not a mess of mixed signals and betrayals on both ends, well, “the rest of _his_ life” was likely to be until the literal end of time. How even now could one, tiny human life compete with that or hold a former angel’s attention? “I’d really hoped things were going that way, and with his dad’s orders, there really wasn’t anything after that.”

“True,” her mom chirped, hopping down from her stool. “But I know a connection when I see it. Besides, you lost your work partner and someone more in the same stroke. I know what it’s like when your center of gravity is just gone.”

Chloe’s chest clenched at that. She’d lived as long without her dad as she had with him, but nothing could take the sting away of losing her dad, of at first the seemingly senseless death he’d suffered. She wasn’t sure if it helped any that he’d been murdered for trying to solve the warden’s network of crimes or not. Either way, John Decker had been robbed of the life he’d deserved, and his family had been left bereft of a father and grandfather. Sometimes with as flighty and childish as her mom could be, she forgot that her mom had lost him too.

That it could still bother her between D-list movie shoots in Budapest and Toronto and her convention circuit tours.

Clearly, it did.

Chloe stood and crossed the distance between her and her mother. She’d meant to hug the older woman but instead, had been swept up into her mother’s arms. Her mom held her and stroked her back in a way she hadn’t for decades, not since Chloe was far younger than Trixie and got nauseated before auditions.

It was nice.

Fleeting but nice.

She pulled away, finally, self-conscious by falling apart in front of anyone, maybe especially her mother. After all, Chloe had been the parentified child for so long. She didn’t know how to let her mom take the reins.

Her mother set hands on Chloe’s shoulders and offered her a smile. “Now, the truth is that it’s going to hurt for a long time. With a love like that---don’t argue, I saw you _both_ on the stand in court---it will probably hurt in some way for the rest of your life. The trick is to endure until the sharp pains that make you want to scream and never stop fade into a dull ache that you can muddle through with.”

“And the solution is wine?”

“No, it’s just trying to live, sweetie. I…I know I travel a lot, but I’ll try and take gigs in L.A. for the next year or so. You just need to get back into your life bit by bit. It’s going to hurt and you’re going to always look over your shoulder a bit, your mind thinking about how he would have reacted to things, even in the mundane life stuff, but it does get easier.”

Chloe forced her voice to stay level. If she broke now and cried, she feared she’d never stop. “I thought I was faking it well. I didn’t mean---”

Her mom brought a forefinger to Chloe’s lips. “Shh, now. Let’s get you a beauty day first. Everything always feels better after a good spa massage and with highlights. Then, honestly, maybe we’ll talk about how to get you a bit more of a social life.”

“Trixie squealed on that too.”

“It’s hard when everyone else is mostly happy. But you learn to smile at the right time, to fake the joy until eventually you can feel some again. Come on, I called in every favor I had with Orlando down in Beverly Hills. Let Mom treat you.” She reached up and stroked some of Chloe’s hair back from her face. “You took care of me for a long time after your dad…you know when. I want to pay that back.”

Chloe nodded and gazed down at her rumpled work shirt. “I think that I need to get changed some. Give me ten and we can head out.”

Her mother’s expression soured. “Honey, have I taught you nothing? It takes at least thirty minutes to get your face on. I don’t want you back for an hour---nice hot bath, a decent and ironed dress, and full make up. We want to be fabulous for the 90210.”

That was the mother she knew.

“Right and ‘be fabulous always.’”

“Exactly!” her mother buzzed. “Now go get ready to greet the rest of the afternoon.”

Chloe hurried up the stairs and to her room. While her mom could often grate on her nerves, she was trying, and a day or alright, afternoon and evening out was far better than sitting around on her sofa eating old Goldfish crackers and rewatching _Dirty Dancing_ on streaming again (Look, she could have soft, gooey girly layers too). She was yanking off her button down and flinging it onto the bed before her eyes caught the long, chestnut-colored object on her pillow.

She frowned and picked it up, even more confused as she brought it closer to her eyes. The wood was cherry would she figured and carved elegantly. It was about a foot long and ended in a scoop at the end and was this a spoon? Chloe twisted the object over in her hands and took notes of the individual knicks that had to have gone into carving the object by hand. The handle for the spoon---she decided that, though long, it just had to be a spoon---consisted of three intricate Celtic knots that were interwoven together. At the tip of the handle was a dragon sitting up with its wings outstretched and its snout about to open to breathe fire.

It was, without a doubt, one of the weirdest things she’d ever seen.

Where had it even come from?

Maybe Trixie? Had Dan taken her to some carnival or festival? If he had, then this was an interesting and questionable use of their daughter’s allowance. It was novel but so not a style that matched with anything else in the house. Shrugging, Chloe set the spoon (it was a spoon, damn it) on her bedside table and promised to return it to her daughter’s room in the morning.

She had a mother-daughter day of her own to indulge in.

**

Her monkey denied ever having seen the spoon-thing before. That left Chloe more confused because the only other roommate they’d ever had was Maze and randomly carved Celtic objects were so not her bent. When she’d double checked and cleared out the last of Maze’s things from her room when the demon had moved out about a year ago, Chloe had found many things. Some of leather and some she’d had to Google to figure out, uh, which orifice they went in. However, the spoon was clearly quaint and country and _nothing_ like the _Spencer’s Gifts_ and then some Maze had run out of her room.

So, where had it even come from?

Chloe managed to push it out of her mind as she grew busy with Trixie entering middle school, a set of possible serial murders in the city, and an honest effort again to resurrect Tribe Nights. The carved object honestly skipped her mind until some time in October when she came home, laden down with Chinese takeout for both her and her daughter, and found a second spoon on the kitchen counter.

Chloe set the kung pow chicken from _Mr. Chang’s_ on the opposite side of the counter and studied the new carved spoon. This time, the wood was dark, clearly ebony, and the handle was whittled down to a series of hearts and anchors that alternated down its length.

“Okay, now this is just getting weird.”

Since she only knew two beings who could easily sneak into her home without needing to worry about locks, Chloe assumed that she was going to have to talk to Maze or Amenadiel (more likely Maze, that demon was sneaky) about breaking into and back out of her place.

Or so she thought until Trixie waltzed into the kitchen and changed her path from a bee line to the food to the spoon instead.

“Cool! I figured you’d get a new one since I got one on my pillow about a month ago.”

She blinked at her daughter. “You got a second one of these and didn’t tell me?”

Trixie shrugged and turned to the takeout. Pulling a plate from the cabinet, she started doling out the chicken and a few too many egg rolls to be considered healthy on her plate. “Well, you were kind of disappointed when the original one didn’t come from a festival or whatever. I wasn’t sure you’d want to know that a second one got into the house.”

Chloe frowned. “First, you can have two egg rolls. The other two are my share, Monkey.”

Trixie grumbled but did as she was told. “And?”

“Second, is Maze making these? I can’t think of how anyone would sneak this into the house otherwise. It definitely isn’t the kind of weird game Amenadiel would play, and he’s got baby on the brain so isn’t really thinking that much into off-the-wall pranks.”

Trixie shook her head and set her plate down. Without another word, she scurried to her room and came back with her own spoon. It was teak in color with a mix of looping chains and horseshoes. “I Googled it…okay, so took a picture and reverse image searched. They’re called lovespoons. I mean…it’s this whole Welsh thing and super old as a tradition. I think the horseshoes are good luck!”

Chloe blinked, processing half of that. Honestly, it was pretty clever. She should have thought to Google her first spoon. “So, Maze bought these?”

Trixie rolled her eyes and handed the spoon to her. “No way. Maze wouldn’t buy them. She also wouldn’t waste her knives on making these. They are so not for whittling or carving or whatever. Throwing blades are super different.”

Chloe was unsure if it was a good thing that her eleven-year-old knew the difference.

“But?”

“You know her. If she wants you to get a message, she’ll just say it.”

That was true. Maze was the least coy person on the planet.

“I…then who can just sneak into a house like this?”

Trixie rolled her eyes again, and Chloe and Dan were going to have to have a talk with their pre-teen about abusing sarcasm and showing parents respect. However, she did point to the bowl of the spoon. “Turn it over. Mine had a tiny ‘LM’ on the bottom of the curve of the spoon. So, duh. Lucifer did it.”

The fact that her daughter was so matter-of-fact about this was beginning to both blow Chloe’s mind and fray her nerves. There was no way that Lucifer could have come up here at all with the demons down below. He never would have taken that chance, and he certainly would have done something less enigmatic than leave carved---seriously what---spoons behind.

“Monkey, we talked about this. He’s gone now, remember? He had to go out of the country” _And this plane of existence_. “…on business for his dad.”

Trixie shrugged and finally stuffed part of an eggroll in her mouth. She took several bites before speaking again with her mouth still half-full. Hmm. Maybe she and Dan would have to review manners too. “But he’s the Devil. So, he can clearly pop back up when he wants. I mean, even if God said not to…it’s not like Lucifer ever listened before.”

“But he’s on a business trip. And the Devil’s not re---”

Trixie finished chewing her eggroll. “Duh, he and Maze are the real deal, Mom. I’m a kid and not an idiot. When I go to mass with the abuelos, I mean, sometimes I get the Bible version of stuff. So, if his dad wants him to only stay in Hell and take care of business there, don’t you think Lucifer would find a way to break the rules even a little and sneak out?” She picked up her plate and then grabbed a fork from the drawer before heading to the sofa. “But maybe next time he could bring something cooler from Hell. I mean, maybe like volcanic rocks or something? I dunno. The spoons are, uh, nice but kind of weird.”

Chloe felt like her brain was moving with all the speed of a computer gunked down by malware. She was still circling about eight points back where her daughter was nonchalant about knowing both the Devil and his head demon (well, Maze was his head demon; now, she was more like a nanny). However, her brain stuttered a bit and finally caught up with the full conversation. Her daughter wasn’t upset that the Devil was sneaking into their house to leave gifts. Nope. She just wanted better loot.

So, as odd as it was to say out loud, Chloe reprimanded her daughter a little. “Trixie-babe, you can’t be ungrateful about gifts. These clearly take a lot of time.”

Her daughter paused with her fork halfway to her mouth and considered her words. “True, but I’d really love some cool Hell souvenirs too.”

Chloe didn’t have an answer for that.


	3. Chapter Three

She wanted to ask Maze what the hell was going on, but the demon had been on a long bounty hunt in Mexico and then came back injured. She’d been on bedrest with Linda (“I’m still not that kind of doctor”) tending to her for a while. Besides, the serial murder case dragged on, and life got busy as, eventually, the Holiday Season was upon her. And, honestly, Chloe hadn’t wanted to pry. The thought that Lucifer could just pop in long enough to drop off randomly carved trinkets but not communicate with her, to not even _try,_ stung too much to dig into.

Then, of all things, Christmas morning arrived, and this time she had Trixie. Usually, she got her daughter for Thanksgiving because---miracles of miracles---the Great Penelope Decker tended to take a break from filming shlock or being the star of questionable quality conventions to sit down for turkey (but never stuffing because _the carbs darling!_ ). However, she’d been stuck with an obligation in some third-rate vampire (what else) film in Budapest so Chloe had taken a shift at the precinct and let Dan and his newish girlfriend take Trixie that day. But it was Christmas now, and her daughter already had gotten her fair share of clothes, cell phone accessories, drawing supplies, and a new knife, and, _seriously_ , Chloe was going to have to sit Maze down again and explain that weapons were not for middle schoolers.

However, she and her monkey had gotten through all the presents she knew about when Trixie dove back under the tree and pulled out two wrapped in brightly shimmering red foil paper.

“Hey Trix, did Dad sneak in extra stuff?” she asked as her daughter handed the larger and longer package to her.

Trixie shook her head. “No, Dad said I’d get all my stuff tomorrow. The _Food Ninja_ thing was what he got for us over here since he’s crazy about it. So, not Dad.”

Chloe frowned. “I know it’s not an extra from Maze because she doesn’t wrap.”

Maze, as she did with many human things, still didn’t see the point in standing on extra ceremony. Instead, she usually shoved stuff in a brown paper bag or, if she were feeling somewhat festive, might badly tape the comics pages around something. That could possibly be her mom, but Mom forgot to send Christmas gifts on time most years, let alone when she was snowed-in in Eastern Europe.

Trixie shrugged and checked the gold tag on her package and squealed so loud that Chloe felt her ears ring afterwards. “It’s from Lucifer! I knew he’d send something!”

Chloe blinked.

Lucifer had never been the type to give Christmas presents before. He’d made a small exception twice just for Ella and, even then, it had been small boxes of multi-flavored candy canes both years. Considering what had to be his beyond messed up family dynamics and association with the holiday, Chloe couldn’t blame him. But this was…why could he deliver enigmatic gifts but give nothing else, not even a simple letter?

Chloe watched first, half-stunned, half-working to stave off heartbreak, as her daughter tore through the brightly wrapped gift. When she finished pulling open the box, Trixie yanked out a beautifully polished, glassy black stone that looked almost like obsidian, but that Chloe figured probably wasn’t. She wasn’t sure what kind of rocks they had down in Hell, but she had a hunch this was one of them, especially after her daughter’s less than subtle complaints about the spoons.

“I knew he’d up the gift game.”

Chloe finally found her voice again. “I…did his card say anything?”

Trixie shook her head. “Just ‘For Trixie,’” she said shoving the tag in her open hand. Chloe looked it over and, true, if you didn’t know the fine script there and the handwriting off the bat, you wouldn’t know which handsome Devil had sent it. “What about yours, Mom? What is it?”

She frowned and held her breath as she opened up the tag, hoping for anything more than just her name. Technically, the flowing script there hadn’t even listed that. Just a simple “Detective,” but it brought tears to her eyes. Chloe blinked them quickly away because she was trying so much harder to be strong for Trixie. She probably didn’t come off as collected as she wanted to, since a small hand was squeezing her shoulder.

“It’s okay, Mom. Don’t you want to see what it is?”

“I…of course,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

It was just that she could _hear_ him say it. There were a million intonations and ways he’d come to say her title over the years, but she’d heard it said so lovingly more than once that it ached to even think about it. Let alone to think about the last time he’d used her given name on the balcony at Lux before he’d literally flown away.

“Then let’s get it open,” her daughter gamely said and started peeling off the paper for her.

This was a newer dynamic or one that had become more obvious since Lucifer had left for Hell. When she’d been young, her father had worked long hours as a beat cop, and she’d taken care of her mom. She’d done it, especially for financial things, after her dad’s murder too, become the parentified teenager no doubt. She thought for a long time that even with the danger inherent in their jobs, she and Dan had done a good job of shielding Trixie. Definitely worse after Malcolm, but then they’d been trying harder after Trixie had confessed at that insufferably pretentious school how she sometimes hid things not to make her parents worry.

Any here they were with her about to burst into tears all day, and her almost-twelve-year-old trying to keep her stable.

When Trixie finished opening the box, Chloe swallowed at the two things inside. There was, of course, another spoon, and she was going to have to talk to Maze tomorrow about this craziness. It was a deep ebony again and this time its handle alternated between hearts and ornate locks. Beside it, lay a brightly shimmering stone, a polished bit of volcanic glass as well although clear and bright, and how it had been formed so beautifully down in Hell, Chloe would never understand.

She pulled out both and held them to her chests. It took a few deep breaths before she could speak again. “These are really nice, Monkey. Maybe we can get a nice shadow box or something to display both the stones.”

Trixie shook her head and held her own, dark as night, to her chest. “No, it’s meant to be out. You know? That way I can keep it on my table by my bed.”

Chloe nodded and felt the brimming warmth in the stone, almost as it thrummed with life in her palm. “Agreed. Now, Monkey, I do have some extra brownies I might have made last night for Christmas treats. Are you ready?”

Trixie nodded emphatically but paused again, staring at their gifts. “Do you think he’ll ever come back?”

She sighed and gathered her baby up in her arms. Chloe counted down the days in her head until her monkey got to the point she’d try and show how independent she was now by refusing hugs. Chloe had definitely gone through that phase by fifteen, and after her dad was killed, she wished like Hell she never had. She hoped Trixie didn’t follow in her footsteps on that account, but Chloe squeezed her growing girl a bit harder just to save stuff to memory in case she did.

“Trixie-babe,” she started, kissing the top of Trixie’s head. “If he can come back, I know he will. I’m sure he’s trying right now. But it’s not up to us, and it’s not even up to him.”

“Is it up to his dad cause his dad sucks.”

Chloe laughed, feeling some of the tension drain from her. “Yeah, his dad really does, but I don’t think so either. I think it’s all about the demons down there and whatever Lucifer has to do to keep them in place. It could be a real long time before he comes back.”

“How long?”

She sighed and hugged Trixie a third time. “It could be years. You might even be an old lady when he does, or he might not come back at all. But we both know he’s trying, and maybe---”

“And he’ll keep sending us things till then,” Trixie added, standing up to head to the table. “It sucks too, but it’s…he hasn’t forgotten us.”

Chloe shook her head and ran her fingers over the handle of her newest spoon. “No, Monkey, he’d never do that.”

**

“Decker, I knew you’d be by today.” Maze opened the door wide to Ché Linda, and Chloe followed her inside.

She didn’t hear any of the usual noise she expected: no Amenadiel cooking in the kitchen (and when had angels ever learned to cook human food or was that just a general Celestial perk), no Linda pouring over her client cases and the soft flutter of paper against paper, and no cooing or (to be real) even crying from Baby Charlie.

“Where is everyone?” she asked, as she shucked off her coat and followed Maze to the table.

“They knew you’d be over soon enough too today. They took Charlie to the park and then there’s some _Nutbreaker_ play-thing or something?”

Chloe chuckled. “ _The Nutcracker_ is a ballet. I used to actually really love it as a kid. They have a big one in the park for a week around here. My dad and mom took me a few times.”

“Oh, well, they’re gonna see if Charlie won’t cry through that, I guess. I don’t think that’ll happen. The kid has a set of lungs on him.” Maze smirked. “Maybe his angel talent will be supersonic. Again, way he cries when he’s wet, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Chloe sighed and accepted the cup of coffee Maze handed her. She didn’t even arch an eyebrow when she took a sip and realized it had been Irished up. Honestly, after the last twenty-four hours, she could use the jolt of liquid courage in her system. “How’d you know I’d be by?”

Maze stood and bounded up the stairs. In a few minutes, she was back with a spoon of her own. This one looked like cedar maybe with its red hue and was carved in a mix of the interlocking Celtic knots around hearts and horseshoes.

“It was in a box under the Christmas tree yesterday. Amenadiel did the wrapping and fetched everything this time. He was summoned for it.”

Chloe’s eyes went wide. “He visits?”

“He can go to the gates. Lucifer has them locked. No one goes in or out, not anymore. Azrael---his sister and the Angel of Death---brings whoever she has on her roster to the gates to be shuffled inside. Amenadiel visits every day because of course he feels guilty. I sometimes feel it too. I mean, I’m pissed cause he didn’t even _offer_ to take me home. But I’m also sad cause I miss him, and I am feeling guilty because Charlie’s safe and _not there_ , and I’m glad about that.”

Chloe arched an eyebrow at Maze. That was more than she’d ever heard Maze describe her feelings in over three years of knowing the demon. “I…wow.”

Maze rolled her eyes. “The downside to living with Linda is that I have crying baby---Charlie’s better when he’s being cute of course---and a lot of talks about feelings. I’m learning to deal more with the pesky human things. But, yeah, I guess so is Amenadiel. He visits, but Lucifer doesn’t really see him. The Christmas present exchange was the first thing he’s spoken with Lucifer about.”

She frowned and pulled out her bag, letting all the spoons she had---not just the one from yesterday morning---spill onto the table. “But Trixie and I have been getting these for months. I don’t understand.”

Maze nodded. “I suspected as much when I saw Charlie’s. I noticed one in Trix’s room a few weeks ago when she was showing me her latest Miss Alien drawings. But, you know, you go to all those festival things and collect stuff from street fairs. I wasn’t sure.”

“Well, especially Dan likes to take her out to stuff and not only Netflix and pizza on her days over there but guilty as charged. Trix’s room is getting pretty filled with trinkets and things.”

“Crap, Decker. Half that stuff is definitely just random fair crap. But the lovespoons aren’t that.”

Chloe blinked. “The what?”

Maze set the one for Charlie on the table, completing so far, a set of five Lucifer had whittled. And somehow, the fact that the Devil was an expert wood carver was somehow harder to digest than anything else over the eons that Lucifer had probably bothered to pick up. Maybe Chloe had always assumed he’d just poured his boredom and need to stay entertained into music and, of course, sex. He’d been more than candid around the precinct and while bragging to Ella that he’d _inspired_ the _Kama Sutra_ after all. At the time, it was just after Chloe had decided to stop investigating him at all, and she’d assumed it was another possibly delusional claim. In the year plus since she’d actually _known_ , it made more than perfect sense and was, to be honest, somewhat intimidating. However, the idea of Lucifer Morningstar, king of sin and carnal delights, sitting down to carve spoons seemed impossible.

Like Lucifer would be welcomed up back in Heaven before he’d do handcrafts-level of impossible.

“Lovespoons,” Maze repeated, waving her hand before her. “They’re this weird hobby Lucifer took up. Once, we went to Wales back in the day.”

“Define ‘the day.’”

“I dunno, maybe 1700s? Maybe earlier.” Maze shrugged. “Human time blurs together a crazy amount.”

Chloe swallowed hard. There was a big difference in centuries to her, but to Maze or Lucifer it was probably like trying to remember if you ordered pizza on Tuesday night or Friday night, if it were a matter of a few days here or there. And again, her heart clenched, worrying that even if it were possible for Lucifer to fix things…if he’d do it far too late for it to matter to her.

“But he went to Wales and learned to carve lovespoons?”

“Oh, we were there to check out stockades. That’s a pretty interesting human trick. I don’t know if I find them as useful as a good St. Andrews Cross or just handcuffs, but torture implements are our business so…”

She shuddered a little but kept the neutral expression on her face. Chloe’s friend was a demon and the man she loved was the Devil as well as an angel. She understood now, more than ever after _The Mayan_ , why the brutal side---the torturing side---was needed in Hell. Demons, even Maze, weren’t going to listen to reason. Just force. And if they ever did escape in mass…they’d all be truly screwed here on Earth.

“But Lucifer got bored. He wandered off to a bar as he tends to, and he learned the hobby. Done it for years since when he gets bored of the loops. There’s no music in Hell except bad stuff, out of tune in the loops. He can’t sneak instruments down there, he tried. And, yeah, not gonna paint a picture but even Lilim could get boring for him once in a while. So, yeah, Amenadiel wouldn’t care or notice when Lucifer snuck a branch here or a log there back to Hell. What would be the point in taking it away?” Maze shrugged. “Besides, we had plenty of blades.”

“Huh,” Chloe said. Not exactly sure what she’d been expecting. But it made sense in a way. Maze wasn’t wrong, and there had to be blades of every kind in Hell for cutting flesh…ones that would work as well on wood for something to create and not destroy. And, deep down, Lucifer was nothing if not an artist, but with no pianos in Hell… “I didn’t know.”

Maze sighed and drained her drink. It was straight Scotch, and Chloe could smell it from here. “He doesn’t do it on vacation. It would be a waste of precious time. But down there? I think it keeps him sane, especially now. It all takes time and the more intricate the work, the longer it takes. You can Google it, I’m sure. He sat down and told me once what all the symbols meant when he started making them, and you bet I started chewing his ass out over it. I thought it was soft.”

“It’s really sweet,” Chloe objected.

Maze laughed and it was laced with bitterness. “It’s definitely _soft_ , but I’ve gone soft too. You know? I thought it was one of the sweetest things I’d ever seen when Linda opened it for Charlie. I…the hearts are love of course and the horseshoes are luck. Not that Charlie needs it in a house with the best torturer on Hell’s roster and God’s strongest warrior in it. But, yeah, can’t do anything but help to have the Devil’s luck either.”

“But he could get it to me. He doesn’t even send notes, but these just show up in my house. I…is he sneaking up here?”

Maze shook her head. “If he’s not even letting Amenadiel or Azrael through the gates to make Celestial business easier and soul drops faster, then he’s _not_ going either. It’s a bit of magic---he can do a very little, nothing super interesting---but it’s how the locks open around him, Oh, and a marginal bit of telekinesis.”

Chloe’s mouth gaped open. That explained the locks, but she’d never seen Lucifer like make things float. “What?”

“Again, nothing that exciting, but sleight of hand or mind, really, with coins and small objects. Anyway, he can probably Will enough of a portal or weak spot between the planes to get an object through. Make sure the spoons are protected enough not to burn to a cinder on the way up. Paper? Would incinerate, no doubt. Probably why he broke down and had Amenadiel help him do the Christmas gifts up fancy with paper and things.”

“So, he can’t ever---”

Maze shook her head. “He can send these, and I got Trix’s text yesterday. The rocks from Hell won’t burn on the way up either, duh. So, he can send what he can.” Maze poured another shot of whiskey into her mug and, without being asked, poured a dose into hers. Chloe nodded gratefully; she could use it. “He’ll figure it out, Decker. I mean, yeah, Lucifer can be a real idiot sometimes and get tunnel vision on shit. But he didn’t work his way up to King of Hell the first time _just_ because he was a fallen angel. There are some big-time demons down there, other Fallen too. He knows how to kick ass.” She sniffed a bit and then drained her mug. “Even if he left his best ass-kicker behind.”

“He wanted you to have a life, I think. I bet if he’d asked you at all, come by here, his resolve would have failed.”

“Still a selfish dick move, but I used to have a selfish dick boss.” She shrugged again. “But he’s a real bastard in a fight, and he’ll get home. I know that much about him, if only because being on vacation some day will piss his dad off. Tons.”

Chloe chuckled at that and, okay, may have hiccupped too. “I can believe in that. That if it’ll make God mad, Lucifer will find a way. Maybe not the best idea---”

“Well, it’s eons too late for that anyway,” Maze replied.

“But still, I know he wanted you to have a good life here. You’re not the same Maze who came here. You know it’s true. You actually like me.”

“Get you drunk, lightweight and you’re fun to be around. I mean, you’re still pretty sensible, too Granny Panties for me, Decker, but you’re not what I thought at first.” She let her fingers drum against her mug. “No humans really are. I…he wasn’t wrong. I wanted to stay here with Linda and even Amenadiel, the insufferably inflexible dumbass. I love Charlie. I…one day maybe Eve will come back.”

Chloe nodded and picked her mug up and raised it high, waiting for Maze to clink her own against her. “To the Lonely Hearts’ Club, may meetings be frequent and often.”

“And be sponsored by Lucifer’s big ass stash of Macallan.”  
  


Chloe chuckled and, okay, maybe also snorted a little. “I’ll drink to that!”


	4. Chapter Four

Over five years came and went.

Five years, a heart that ached and throbbed but barely felt like it beat. Five years where Trixie stopped asking and looked more heartbroken than happy when the rocks came for her, even if maybe just a little now, she talked more about going into volcanology or geology at college next year rather than astronomy. Five years where of all insane things, Dan remarried an assistant D.A. (he apparently had a type) and started hinting after Trixie was in college, he’d transfer out to the suburbs and a desk, away from murder and a job that had already taken too much from him.

Five years where everyone’s life seemed to move on but hers, and where it bit into her a little more each time, even as she chased the bitterness away as best she could, especially when she spent time with her extended and piece-meal family. But it would always burn. Her life revolved around work---it always would although her current consultant was proficient and talented but no fun to work with (who could be as fun as the Devil?)---and currently still taking care of Trixie, even if a seventeen-year-old was more than vocal in insisting she could handle herself. And there was little else. There couldn’t be _anyone else_ , not for her and not ever.

But she had a pile of dozens of spoons by now, and she watched, her heart just a bit more upset and torn, as Eve came back to Maze and the Lonely Hearts’ Club winnowed back down to one. Chloe watched as Dan floated around happily remarried and as Linda and Amenadiel started picking out first grades for a still-wingless Charlie.

Their lives went on, and hers was just stopped.

Currently, she was at Charlie’s sixth birthday party. It was a family affair, this one. With just the usual gang. His kid-centric one had happened already with his kindergarten class at a roller-skating rink, which had been at least amusing. Angels and demons had many lethal skills, but in both cases, skating had _not_ been among them, and Amenadiel and Maze both had spent more time on their butts than prowling the rink.

Now, though, it was just her, Trixie (she was the preferred Charlie-sitter because, honestly, in case the others were busy and Charlie did grow wings, at least Trixie wouldn’t freak or call the CDC or something), Ella, Maze, Dan and Sara, and of course the proud parents and the birthday boy. (Eve had a conflict; a photoshoot she was in charge of finishing for a big magazine client had bled over into today. Kind of the price of being an in-demand photographer.)

Chloe watched and clapped as Charlie blew out the candles (and maybe sputtered a little, and she’d probably skip the cake in flu season). A huge part of her was so very proud for what Lucifer had done, how he’d spared his nephew such a horrible fate as growing up in Hell, tortured by demons and worse for the rest of his (probably) infinite lifespan. And yet, she just felt like he should be here, that if she had a wish like Charlie had now, that Lucifer safe and in her arms would be all she’d want.

As Linda leaned over to cut the cake, the party broke back out into excited chatter. Ella had bounced (she always bounced) over to her and was talking about this anime convention coming up and how she needed a wing-woman to go. Chloe was pretty sure that Ella was also trying to sell her on the idea of complimenting neon wigs and did Chloe like frost blue when the Earth started to shake.

Charlie cried, and Amenadiel and Maze both flocked to him instantly, like the ersatz bodyguards they were, wrapping their arms around him as tightly as they could. Chloe, who’d lived in L.A. her whole life, jumped up quickly enough and lunged with Trixie into the nearest doorway. Yeah, a lot of shaking was going on, but it probably wasn’t even a five on the Richter Scale.

At least that’s what she thought until the ground began to crater apart in the center of Linda’s living room, till a mawing pit opened and a sofa was sucked down into it, lapped by flames. Ella yipped from where she huddled in the doorway of the guest bathroom and drew out her Crucifix necklace, praying rapidly in Spanish. Between Dan and his parents and just being on the job, Chloe could usually ferret basic stuff out. But the litany was so fast, she had no clue, but figured it was a literal “Hail Mary” or something similar. Dan had taken refuge with Sara under the huge wooden kitchen table and couldn’t yet see everything.

But he would.

As the rumbling settled, Maze and Amenadiel moved with all the preternatural speed they were graced with. Maze jumped away from Charlie and pulled out her favorite blades, the one forged in Hell and capable of killing almost anything. Amenadiel had moved to the doorway of the first- floor guest bedroom and handed Charlie off to Linda who drew him close to her body, the little boy shoving his head in his mom’s hip and crying. Trixie shook in Chloe’s grasp and, although they were the same size now, Chloe held her as tightly as she could. Her instinct was to pull her gun, but Amenadiel with his wings drawn and razor-sharp primaries arched forward and Maze with her blades would be a thousand times more effective against a threat.

If a demon was coming for Charlie---and God what did that mean for Lucifer---then her bullets or Dan’s would be as useful as a kid’s spitballs.

The floor gave a final shudder, and the ring of fire flared and spat, and now Sara’s screams and Dan’s shouts had joined Charlie’s cries and Ella’s frantic prayers in the melee. Chloe watched, heart hammering and mind running down plans, whatever it took to protect the two kids still in the room, especially Charlie, when large, ragged, feathered wings burst through the hole.

Amenadiel and Maze’s posture both went slack as they stalked to the opening and grabbed for Lucifer’s shoulders.

Chloe couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t---

In the million times the scenario came up, she’d never thought it would be anything like this. She had thought of him just coming through the doorway as if he owned her apartment, about him bursting into the precinct with boxes of this time _not_ acid-laced donuts, about going to the penthouse as she regularly did to ensure it was still cleaned to his standards and finding him smoking on the balcony. She had not anticipated this.

To see him now on the wood floor as the hole re-sealed itself, as shaking and fragile mess. His wings were not just grey with soot but also red with dried blood. She knew very little about wings as a whole, had seen Amenadiel’s precious few times in the intervening years, but she could tell by looking between the brothers that Lucifer’s right wing hung at an angle that wasn’t natural, as if something had bent it back and wrenched the great wing joint out of its socket.

How he’d even been able to fly out of Hell was a miracle.

He opened his eyes, and the ones that blinked back at all of them weren’t the soulful brown ones she usually knew or associated with him. She’d seen the red ones that danced with living flame before. Once in an abandoned factory before she’d shot him, when she’d almost put the pieces together so early on in their partnership but refused to believe it. Once staring back at her and begging her to understand over Marcus Pierce’s body. Beseeching her to love him---all of him---back at the penthouse and her shaking with fear because, at the time, she’d wanted to but couldn’t. Not yet. Riddled with fear at the changes overtaking him that he couldn’t control and also so mired in self-loathing, they had broken her heart the night of the masquerade ball at Lux. And, finally, before they’d flashed normal (well to her) at _The Mayan_ , when his fully Devilish side had saved her life and sent the hordes of Hell right back under his command.

She knew those eyes, and those were _his_ as surely as the ones he’d been presumably created with before the universe was full or very old at all.

But they were unfocused, roved around the room in panic, even as his bad wing fluttered and he gasped out ragged breaths.

In all this confusion, even as Maze and Amenadiel tried to hold him down as he thrashed and groaned, it was Linda who spoke first. Maybe because psychiatrists---especially this one---had seen everything by now. Maybe just because vestiges of med school training had come back. Maybe because Dan and her own brains were still doing loops of “what the fuck,” but it was Linda who pointed out the beyond obvious:

“He’s in shock.”

The doctor sighed and looked down at her son. “Charlie, stay here.”

“Mom!” The young boy shouted.

Ella, somehow, seemed to get her sense back, at least a little. Now that the not-an-earthquake had stopped fully, she trotted over to the doorway to the guest room and grabbed Charlie up in her arms. “I got him. I…what the heck is going on?”

Linda nodded gratefully to Ella and approached Lucifer. Maze and Amenadiel were still holding him down, mostly to keep him from thrashing hard enough to damage his injured wing even worse. The psychiatrist knelt and reached for Lucifer’s cheek. For a second, his eyes flashed brown and seemed to be more coherent before they were filled with hellfire again.

“Lucifer, it’s Linda. I need you to take some deep, easy breaths. You’re home, okay? This is real, and you’re home, and you’re in shock.”

Lucifer jerked his head back, eyes still darting around the room, and it stabbed into Chloe’s heart deeply. She understood the body language. He was checking the corners around him, looking for any weak spots or signs of someone sneaking in for attack. It probably wasn’t helping that a demon and an angel were both holding him down. Then again, it wouldn’t do good for _any of them_ to have a rampaging (former) archangel around either.

“Lucifer, breathe,” Linda said, her voice steady. “One, in. Two, out.”

Chloe didn’t think it would work, but maybe they’d done that before in session and muscle memory kicked back in. Lucifer started to breathe as she asked, even as Linda moved her hand to his bare chest and now that Chloe could focus, she could see how many cuts and opens wounds were on it. Dear God, what had happened there? But as the shrink breathed in and out in exaggeratedly deep breaths, so did Lucifer.

Finally, he calmed. His eyes grew brown and focus came to them. His rigid posture grew relaxed, and his wings, especially the bad one, stopped fluttering desperately. He coughed and then spoke, his voice like the crackling of dry leaves as he spoke:

“I’m home?”

The end of his croak raised up, and Chloe rushed forward, trusting Trixie to understand enough to stay back as Lucifer still got his bearings. She lunged forward beside Linda and swept Lucifer up in a desperate hug, made somewhat awkward to achieve by his mangled wings.

She kissed his lips, trying not to cry at the way his chafed ones tasted of sulfur and ash, and held him close. Pulling away, she offered him her best, most calming smile, even though she felt like shit on the inside, and pushed a stray bit of curling dark and blood-stained hair back from his face.

“Yes, Lucifer. You’re back. And I’ve missed you so much.”

**

He couldn’t retract wings that injured. Even before he tried, Amenadiel had warned him against it. But it hadn’t worked. They couldn’t just get him into a car or even the back of a paneled van. His wingspan was too large, and his bad, right wing was too injured to get him anywhere. But Linda had a pool house---and Chloe should have been a psychiatrist in Beverly Hills because wow---and Maze and Amenadiel had managed to drag Lucifer, wings and all, to the bedroom there.

The 90210 wasn’t actually a place Chloe had spent much time, outside of Linda’s. Her mother was never that famous an actress, and on sets, she hadn’t really made friends, just been tutored. However, there was something to be said for the luxury Lucifer preferred when on Earth or the good things Linda had. In the doctor’s case, it meant she had room in her home for a demon, the first woman, her baby-daddy (they tended to never ever define exactly where they were in a relationship), and a Nephilim. Now, she had the Devil sacked out on a king bed in her guest house.

Chloe wanted to sit with him, wanted to tend to his wing and wipe his brow, and hug him and never let him go. She wanted to do _all_ of these things, but she couldn’t right now. Right now, they had three humans who were now Celestial insiders, whether they wanted to be or not, and a six-year-old in tears and confused too about everything. Instead, she trusted for a while that Linda, with her medical expertise, and Maze, with her encyclopedic knowledge over the history of her former king’s past injuries, to tend to him. She and Amenadiel had to go into damage control.

At least better Amenadiel, she hoped, than Maze, who had zero tact.

Sighing, she leaned down and kissed Lucifer’s forehead. He was shivering still and mostly out of it. She couldn’t imagine how much pain he was in. With his right wing bent back at an unnatural angle and bone protruding, Chloe figured it had to be like having a compound fracture of his leg, but infinitely worse.

Linda offered her a watery smile as she stood and turned back to the main house. “We’ll watch him. I…over the years I’ve taken some EMR training on the side. I’m still not that kind of doctor, but with all of you asking for patch ups, I did decide to keep some basic field knowledge up to date. Not that they cover FUBAR’ed angel wings…”

Maze nodded. “It’s happened before. It was…early on in Hell…a few times in a fight so that the demons could keep him on their level. Eventually, he got good enough that no one dared to touch them, because what would come after would be the most exquisite torture. I…it was like starting from the bottom all over again there.”

Maze’s voice shook, and that actually scared Chloe. Maze was never afraid of anything. But it was obvious that in the six years he’d been gone, Lucifer had been beaten and torn apart in so many ways. And she wanted to stay, but someone had to take control here, and that was her job too. To contain.

To keep things safe.

“We’ve got this, Decker. Go make sure the D.A.’s not down here with most of the LAPD for my, Amenadiel, Lucifer, and Charlie’s asses, okay?”

Chloe nodded, and strode back to the house.

Trixie wasn’t anywhere to be found with the Charlie, and she assumed the two had gone up to Charlie’s room. Trixie had seen too many terrible things in her still young life, unfortunately. But that at least reassured Chloe that Trixie would be able to calm Charlie down too. Of course, Charlie had seen Maze’s real face before and his father’s wings often. He knew about angels and demons, but today had been scary and new, with a literal hell portal opening up in his living room. Chloe trusted Trixie to comfort him through it.

She kept her focus on the table where Dan sat beside Sara, stroking her back as his wife keened a little. Some small, weirdly bereft part of Chloe thought that Charlotte would have handled this better somehow. That woman had been many things, but a ball buster chief amongst them. Then again, Sara wasn’t running away to be manipulated by crazy priests in Rome, so she could be doing worse too. Ella had taken off her necklace and was stroking it in one hand. It was weird to see her friend so silent. Meanwhile, Amenadiel was at the stove stirring up hot chocolate from a saucepan as if that would help anything.

Though, true to his suburban dad side, he was pouring out the cocoa into three mugs (all various Muppets characters) and set the cocoa out for all of them. Ella took hers and sipped it greedily before finally talking.

“I…so, it’s all real?”

Chloe sat across from them at the table and could barely keep herself from breaking down into less-than-sane laughter. The reaction hadn’t been that different from her first half-baked thoughts in the loft years ago after Marcus was dead. “Yes. I mean, on the plus side, Ella, you were right about everything, pretty much.”

Ella clutched her crucifix tighter and offered Amenadiel a wobbly smile. “So, I have to ask---”

Amenadiel chuckled, one of those low smooth laughs that put everyone at ease. “I do know him, and I can’t tell you much about my father or about my half-brother, Ella. I thought you were the one who wanted to take everything on faith. Sometimes, it’s still best to believe even with what you know than to pry too close. I don’t want to spoil that for you.”

Ella nodded. “That sounds like a very angel thing to say, dude.”

“Guilty as charged,” he said, taking a seat of his own. “But I can answer some things, and I will whatever I can for you later and when things aren’t this crazy.”

The forensic scientist’s eyes grew wide and she almost dropped her mug before Amenadiel thoughtfully reached out and helped her set Kermit down. “Oh man. Oh man.”

“What?” Dan asked, and Chloe was taking it as a good sign that he was able to even speak.

Really, the three of them were doing way better than she had. That first night, she’d sat in her tub and shook for hours, long after the water had gone cold, not sure of where to run or how far to even go. She was ashamed of that now, but she was only human, after all. The Divine and Infernal both felt so impossibly big, still did. Especially on days like today.

Ella’s face grew bright red. “I got high on cocaine and made out once with Eve. I…she’s _that_ Eve?”

Chloe nodded. “I’m sure she didn’t mind. You needed the buzz then to keep us all not blown up. I mean, she’s the first woman, but she’s pretty much also up for anything. It’s why she and Maze make a chaotic but somehow workable couple.”

“That’s like all my _greats_ grandma.”

Amenadiel frowned. “Wait, so all the great secrets of the universe have been unleashed, and you’re worried that Eve might be mad at you?”

“Is she?”

“I doubt it. She’s pretty forgive and forget as a type,” Amenadiel replied.

Dan took a sip of cocoa, and Chloe flinched a little at how the Miss Piggy mug shook in his hand. When he put the mug back down, he was glaring between them both. “All this time? I mean, Lucifer always talked crazy, and then he was just gone on ‘business for his dad,’ which I figured was a bigger abandonment excuse than picking up a random wife in Vegas, sure.”

Chloe pursed her lips and tried to stay collected. Dan had gotten much better about his Lucifer issues over the years, especially with his own therapy to actually deal with Charlotte’s murder and putting the blame back on Marcus Pierce where it belonged. However, since both she and Trixie had taken Lucifer going back to Hell so hard…and, well, it hadn’t been like they could truly explain it…Dan had been outraged and pissed for both of their sakes. He still was likely to go off on a tangent if she had a bad moment at the precinct or seemed too sad about _that stupid consultant_ (even if by now he knew more than to name names around her or she’d just explode back).

“Well, now you know. Believe me, it was a shock when I found out too.”

Dan rolled his mug between his palms. “It was why you went to Rome.”

Ella nodded like a bobblehead. “Oh, that makes so much sense. I mean, if I were gonna take a month of vacation, I’d go to Jamaica and get sun, but it makes total sense that you’d go to Rome to get all the inside details after you found out.”

“Yeah, um, not to be too bitter about it,” Chloe replied. “But the Catholic Church wasn’t as helpful as I’d hoped it would be.”

Understatement, but after their collectively bad year, Ella had patched herself back together and found faith. Chloe didn’t want to snuff it out, especially when Kinley had been a rogue agent. Of course, the collected works she’d been able to see at the Vatican’s scholar section hadn’t been accurate either. And they’d fanned already burning flames in the wrong damn direction.

Ella shrunk down a little. “I’m sorry. I wish…”

“I so wasn’t in a head space to talk about it, not for a long time,” Chloe said.

Sara wasn’t keening any longer, but she was shaking badly, and had a thousand-yard-stare not-quite-aimed at her Fozzie mug. Chloe was worried she was going catatonic. Linda admitted she’d been about that bad the first week after Lucifer showed her his face. Sara hadn’t seen that, but she’d gotten a pit to Hell opened before her and seen two, different sets of angel wings. Oh, and Lucifer’s eyes. Sara might need a few intensive therapy sessions with Linda and a lot of rest before she was coherent again.

“You knew, though,” Dan continued. “Christ, I let Maze babysit Trixie for me or hang out with at the station. I did for a long time till Trix was big enough to be on her own, and then with Maze more doing Charlie stuff. I…she went to Lucifer’s penthouse. She went to the Devil’s fucking house on your watch, Chlo.”

“She snuck out and Uber’ed and scared us both, Dan,” she said, coldly. “And he saved her life from Tiernan’s thugs and Ponyboy. If Lucifer had been anyone else…anything else…she and Eve would be dead.”

“He’s literally Satan.” Dan s,et his mug down, stood and started to pace.

“Has been the whole time.”

Dan stilled then and glared at her. “And you just what? Are cool with _all_ of this. I mean, that’s fine for you, Chlo. It’s not like you ever believed in anything before. I mean, your mom might be into crystals sometimes at best. And, okay, I’m lapsed with everything, but I went at least to mass until I was in college. So my brain? Going nuts now. I just saw a portal to Hell open, Satan---the real deal---crawl out of it, and you’re just sitting here drinking cocoa.”

“I didn’t get her a mug yet,” Amenadiel corrected.

Dan aimed his gaze at Amenadiel next. “You should have said something.”

“I wouldn’t have let Trixie around Maze or Lucifer, after I knew and adjusted, if I thought it would get her hurt,” Chloe said. “I’m not even going to pretend I didn’t go through whatever is going through your mind now on a huge loop. I admit it. I handled this like shit. I ran away to Europe and things got worse in Rome. Vatican? Not that helpful.”

Ella’s face dimmed a little at that. “Ookay, so I think maybe a time out---”

“No,” Dan replied, his tone clipped. “You had a duty to tell me at least what Maze actually was, and who Trixie’s been hanging out with like it was nothing for years once you did know. I mean, Christ, Chlo!”

“Dan, look---” Amenadiel started.

Her ex sat back down and wrapped an arm around Sara, who at least no longer seemed to be shaking but who was blinking around with very little current awareness in her eyes. God, maybe Linda had catatonia treatment advice, both from the professional and the formerly stricken perspectives. “This is completely batshit.”

Chloe winced a little at that and was glad that at least Lucifer had made it back this far with the nicer set of wings. She was pretty sure Dan would have gone full Chernobyl with the actual bat-like pair. “Yeah, it is, but it’s safe. Maze wouldn’t ever harm Trixie or Charlie. She’s kind of a bonus as a babysitter/friend since, you know, she’d just gut anyone who looks at them funny.”  
  


Ella blinked. “She wouldn’t.”

Amenadiel shrugged. “She could, but then Linda would never talk to her again, so she won’t, but of course Maze would be tempted. Demons tend to fight first and ask questions later.” He laughed ruefully at that. “Maybe angels do too. Seems like some of my less charming siblings have been like that lately.”

“Wait, you go home…like _Heaven_ -home a lot?” Ella almost squealed that part.

“No,” Amenadiel said. “My sister Remy has a big mouth and a few of the younger angels know about Charlie. I don’t think any of the archangels do. I don’t think they’d be too charitable about him; I honestly don’t know. But a few of Remy’s closest hunting buddies---for demons, don’t get nervous---have come to gawk over the years. They haven’t been great visits.”

Chloe rolled her eyes, thinking of the last one (and it was _-el something_ , damn if she could keep them straight) who’d barged into a family game night that she and Trixie had also been at and stayed just long enough to insult every human in the room. They’d tried to dig in at Maze and then been shoved out the door. Would that Maze had just shoved _whoever-el_ out first before they opened their mouth.

“But they’re dangerous,” Dan pointed out.

“I’m dangerous,” Amenadiel replied with that implacable tone he had. “I’m still the Silver City…Heaven’s best warrior. Don’t think if I wanted to that I couldn’t kill you before you knew it. I can’t because angels aren’t allowed to, but it’s not like actual angels are _Precious Moments_ cuddly figures either.”

“Demons and the Devil,” Dan sputtered, waving his free arm wildly around him like windmill. “I can’t fucking believe this.”

“Yeah, I went through that,” Chloe said, checking her watch. It had already been too long. After more than six years, _any_ time was too long. “Look, you’re not going to adjust in a few minutes.” Probably. Ella seemed to be more excited and slightly embarrassed than anything, but she could also see ghosts. Well, one, or so she’d told Chloe years ago. Maybe she was just more used to the utterly impossible. And, well, she’d always been very forgiving of Lucifer either way. “…but you probably need to take a few weeks, maybe the better part of a year, I don’t know. It takes a while, you know? So…I…let me go switch off with Linda, and she can maybe help give Sara something, and you guys can go home. I just---” she looked to Amenadiel, who nodded.

“We need to know you’re not going to say anything,” Amenadiel continued. “Honestly, it doesn’t bother Mazikeen. She’s never been subtle with what she is. Lucifer usually isn’t, and it’s not like the LAPD ever believed him or anyone at Lux, as far as I know. But for Charlie’s sake, since he’s so little, I’d appreciate it if you kept quiet while you try and process this, Dan.”

Dan gaped at all of them, even Ella, like a fish who was flopping on the deck. “You’re asking me to pretend I didn’t just see Hell open up and find out that for a decade I’ve known the Devil and a demon.”

“To be fair, Mazikeen is pretty much or was Lucifer’s right-hand demon,” Amenadiel offered. “She’s smarter than most of them. Lilim always were.”

Chloe would bet on that. Outside of Dromos, the ultimate asshole, the few she’d met more than as a horde at _The Mayan_ didn’t seem like MENSA candidates. “Just go home and think about it.”

“I don’t want Trixie near Maze or him, Chlo. I don’t.”

Ella frowned back at Dan. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“I thought you’d be on my side! You’re the one who’s actually religious! I mean, you probably have actually read the Bible,” Dan objected.

Sara wasn’t shaking anymore, and she wasn’t keening, but she still looked daze with her pupils blown wide, and Chloe really needed to get Linda in here for more medical assistance, such as it was.

“Yeah, and I _know_ Lucifer and I know Maze. If they had some evil plan---and let’s be super real, you know, Lucifer sucks at planning when he’s been here---they weren’t really going about it in any way that makes sense. What? He was gonna make sure a ton of murderers went to prison and she was gonna catch all the criminals who had bounties on their head…and then also turn them over to the cops? That isn’t exactly evil deeds, dude. Kind of the opposite,” Ella objected. “Plus, Maze is super cute with Charlie. Obviously, she’s not going to suddenly eat Trixie or something now that we all got caught up.”

“You should listen to yourselves. It sounds like a cult,” Dan objected, squeezing Sara’s shoulders tightly.

“It’s not, but Dan…I promise. It gets easier, makes more sense in time,” Chloe offered.

Not that Dan and Lucifer had the best history to begin with, but he’d mostly seemed to like Maze outside of Maze’s year of acting out and Twisted Ferret crashing at their place and semi-scarring Trixie. Maybe he’d get it. After the loft, Chloe was sure she’d never even sleep again, especially after being an ocean away hadn’t stopped her nightmares. But she’d been dumb and in shock and had too many stories that barely contained any truth at them at all to try and fall back on. In time, Dan would get that Maze and Lucifer…Amenadiel too…were pretty much who they always were, even if now it was blatantly all true.

He stood and helped ease Sara to the loveseat At least his wife was up and walking, that had to a good sign. Linda swore she hadn’t left her office or moved for days, really, after she saw Lucifer’s face. So, yeah, maybe it would be a quick shock.

Sure, and things always went well for them.

Chloe stood and patted Ella’s shoulder. “I’m sure Amenadiel can play some of the Celestial twenty questions with you, but I need to get Linda and check in on Lucifer. I…next tribe night, we’ll all talk about anything you need to know.”

Ella nodded and offered a small, kind smile. “My head’s still reeling, but I’m like also kind of at the point of _ha, I knew it_! Although, okay, still thought Lucifer was a method actor, but I’m gonna go with not so much now. Unless he has a pyrotechnics budget.”

“Not as such,” Amenadiel corrected.

“Yeah, so I’m good. You go see him. I know a little bit of first aid too if you need anything. And, okay, for a summer my brother, Jay, had this pigeon he rescued that had a broken wing and---”

Chloe blanched a little at the comparison. “Good to know, but I think Maze has seen this kind of thing before. I’m sure she and Linda figured out how to set it by now.”

She turned toward the back of the house to go out to the pool house again. It set her crossing paths with Dan as she did. “Linda will be here in a few. I’m sure whatever Sara needs…in this house? Definitely sure Linda has both smelling salts and strong shots of everything you can imagine.”

“I’m serious, Chlo. I’ll give it time or whatever, and I won’t say anything because, honestly, I don’t want to sound like a complete crazy person, but I don’t want Trixie over here sitting Charlie unless it’s just her and Charlie. I need some time to deal with this Hell stuff, and I can’t just let my kid---”

“ _Our_ kid,” Chloe corrected.

“Yeah, _ours_ , and you should be more worried about it too. Angels I can deal with. They’re the good guys.”

Amenadiel frowned a little at that but didn’t say anything. Chloe had never heard from anyone exactly why Amenadiel had made himself mortal, whatever made him feel _that_ guilty for a couple years, but she figured it involved terrible, immoral dealings that were as far from angelic as possible. She’d learned at least enough to know by now that fluffy, feathered wings didn’t mean you were a saint.

“Maze is cool,” Ella added less-than-helpfully. “I think being good’s a lot about how you act and what you do, you know? Being a cop doesn’t make people good. Like, sure, that’s the job description, but there was all that like Palmetto stuff before I transferred to L.A., but all the precinct was still antsy about when I arrived or Pierce, totally no bueno.”

Dan stiffened at the mention. “Chloe, promise me. No Maze, no Lucifer.”

She sighed. “Trixie’s going to be in college in less than a year. I think you two need to hash it out among yourselves. If you trust her to drive on L.A. freeways, I think you can trust her to keep hanging out with Maze, who’s been sitting her for a decade, Dan.”

“I…” he pursed his lips before answering, and she knew she had him.

He was usually the “cool parent.” It came with the territory of usually having Trixie over weekends and in parts of the summer. It meant that most of the time, he was the one lobbying her to loosen the reins for Trix. He was the one who surprised Trixie with a car at sixteen (and again, no one should drive in L.A. traffic ever, let alone a newly minted teen driver). Surprisingly, he’d also been the one to talk Chloe into letting Trixie have social media accounts by freshman year. This was a completely different scale, but he was always telling her that she needed to let go a little and negotiate with Trixie like two adults now that she was in high school and, well, close to college.

Good then.

See if Trixie was going to just go cold turkey on Maze. Or on Lucifer for that matter, once he was up to visitors and not so injured.

“That’s what I thought. You talk any rules about Hell stuff with Trixie. I’m going to send Linda in. I…I’m sorry you found out this way,” Chloe added, her tone softening. “I guess it probably won’t make you feel any better, but I don’t think there’s any way to see the truth that doesn’t scare you or make you feel dizzy for days or any of it, but I’m sorry it was just out of nowhere.”

“Yeah, well, this is still a shit idea, Chlo.”

She shook her head, reminding herself how little Dan knew about the last decade, especially the things even now and after Lucifer had gone back to Hell, she’d had to piece together from Linda and Maze on tribe nights, always long after Ella went home and after much Tequila had been passed around to loosen both up. Later, when things had settled down and she could think past just the overwhelming need to be back at Lucifer’s side and take care of him, Chloe would explain as much as she could to her ex, would tell him exactly what Lucifer had been doing for the last six years, and how it had protected them all.

For right now, Dan would have to deal with this on his own. If he didn’t head to another continent, he’d _still_ be handling the initial shock better than she had.


	5. Chapter Five

Chloe found the pool house quiet when she entered it, and that made her nervous. Linda and Lucifer were both talkers, which probably meant therapy sessions went on for quite a while with them, and Maze was never shy about expressing her opinion. To come into a completely silent space when they were all present felt wrong. The bedroom was past the modest kitchen and to the right. When she walked in, she found both Maze and Linda, their hands both still stained red, sharing a quiet shot of Vodka between them.

“That bad?”

Maze sighed. “I’ve seen worse on him. I…the first time around…when he just Fell and had to get over all that was definitely worse. It’s also far from the first time a demon hopeful has broken a wing. It just hasn’t happened in a very long time.”

“How long?” Linda asked.

“There hadn’t been a Noah’s ark yet,” Maze admitted. “It’ll heal, but it’ll take time.” She eyed Chloe and sighed. “He’s gonna kill me for explaining this when, you know, he’s not a pretty out of it mess, but he’d do better if you go home.”

“I know I make him vulnerable but---”

“And I know that actually asking you to stay away and let him heal faster probably wouldn’t work. I’m just saying, a break like that takes time. It’s all kinds of bad.” Maze reached for a towel and scrubbed at her hands. “You’re not completely wrong.”

“Yeah, because I know…it’s selfish, but I can’t just leave now,” Chloe said.

Linda frowned between them. “Maybe in a bit you can take a break and go with me for extra first aid supplies. I improvised with splinting, and we’re going to need so many more bandages. I’ll go to some medical supply pharmacy on the other end of the city. That’ll give it some time. But, to be honest, having you here might help keep him calm.”

Chloe frowned at that. “He knows where he is, right?”

“Sometimes,” Maze grunted. “Sometimes, I don’t think so. He’s had worse, but not for a very long time. Some of the crap on my hand? It’s not just blood, which is bad enough. When angel wings---and that’s where you’re right, Decker, cause he’s still an angel with all those hiccups---when the wings are broken that badly, they leak.”

“Okay?” Chloe asked, not quite following.

“Divinity,” Linda summed up. “Or that’s how Maze explained it.”

“Yeah, it’ll heal up too. With it set and him not having to use his wings or having some other asshole demon trying to usurp and beat him up…it’ll get better, at least that part, pretty fast. But for now, leaking a bit of light and yadda yadda.”

“Maze, you probably can’t yadda yadda angel physiology,” Linda added politely.

Maze shrugged. “It seems like poor design from Daddy Dearest, if you ask me. Yeah, wings are their best weapons, no doubt, but you break one right, and they’re pretty out for the count.”

Chloe shivered at that. When Maze was casual with violence, it reminded Chloe exactly who and what she was. She wondered if before Lucifer was banished to Hell if Maze had ever…if any demons before…had ever gotten their hands-on other angels or fought them in battles. She didn’t know. She and Lucifer had only been talking so much even as work partners before he left and…but there’d be time now to have it all answered.

Finally.

“Okay, sounds like a plan. I’ll check in on him, and Linda can see if she can get Sara focused and moving again.” She sighed and raked a hand through her bangs. “Definitely still in shock.”

Linda nodded. “Been there. If a whole portal to Hell opened in my office that day…I’d probably just be in an asylum by now.” She flashed an apologetic frown toward Maze. “No offense.”

Maze rolled her eyes and poured another shot. “None take. Humans are weird. Anyway, Decker, go see him, and I’ll be here in case anything changes or you just…good to have a two-on-one system is all.”

She nodded and walked slowly to the bedroom. Easing open the door, she took in the sight before her and forced herself to choke back a sob. Maze and Linda had clearly washed him off as best they could before getting him patched up. He didn’t have any blood on him, but his body was bruised all over, and the scratches and claw marks over his torso were even more obvious with the dirt and ash washed away. His back was turned to her and she could get a look at the wings. The left was tucked up at his back normally, and it was bedraggled with greyed feathers stained by soot and blood still marring the tips of his longest feathers. She had been near Amenadiel enough to know by now the long ones---the primaries---were like blades for angels. She didn’t think the blood still there was Lucifer’s.

That worried her more.

His other wing shivered involuntarily on his back. Maze---and she didn’t want to know how---must have bent it back to at least lying flat with all the bones lined up correctly. Linda had found what seemed like endless gauze and athletic wrap to cover the bulk of the right wing. It was tied tightly around the wing joint especially, and Chloe assumed it was so Lucifer couldn’t flap it even if he didn’t mean to.

He lay on his right side on the mattress, and beneath his shoulder was a small pool of blood and something viscous that seemed to shine like his feathers should have been doing currently. And through all of this, Lucifer seemed to still be asleep, to shudder regularly as he took in deep, rhythmic breaths.

Chloe circled the bed and forced herself to stay calm and soothing for him as she sat gently on the edge of the mattress. His chest was worse, more scratches and cuts over it, in some places she could barely find interstitial patches of unmarred skin. Reaching out, she smoothed his hair, which was no longer tangled or filthy at least (and Maze would deny it, but she made a good nurse), and pushed it back from his forehead.

“Hey, long time no see.”

He blinked his eyes open, and she felt her smile grow more genuine, even if her heart ached to look at him. “Detective, ‘m sorry I’m late.”

She’d missed him, missed those brown eyes that seemed to never stop staring at her, that always seemed poised to probe out her darkest secrets. The ones that while so achingly kind also seemed to burrow into her soul. Oddly, a talent Lucifer didn’t have, since he’d sworn to her even on the first day that he wasn’t a Jedi or a mind-reader for that matter. But they always had seemed so preternaturally focused, even before she _knew_. Maybe that first hint of the uncanny valley that was Lucifer Morningstar and his insane life.

She set her other hand, palm flat, on his cheek. “I…do you want to talk about it?”

His voice was hoarse as he spoke. “Never again, although I’m sure between you and Linda that it’ll all come out in time. All I want is to get this blasted wing healed and set away, and then to make up for so very much lost time, Chloe.”

Her heart flared with warmth at the mention of her actual name. It was silly, but Lucifer put so much stock in titles. This quirk ranged from the petty with his nickname for Dan to the sweet with the insistence on calling Ella “Miss Lopez” and to the downright oddly formal by almost always calling her “Detective.” It made the times he did say her given name that much sweeter and meaningful.

“That bad, huh?” she asked, looking over his back and at the wings settled there, grey as soot and the right one still trembling a bit.

“It wasn’t a holiday, let me put it that way. However, after a very long time, and, to be frank, the full out slaughter of a few demon tribes who were not inclined to listen to their King, I’m home for the duration.”

“What?”

“Yes, Hell needs a king, but I was able to wrangle a bit of a stop gap for that. My most trusted Lilim---Mazikeen’s siblings---are running the day-to-day there, but I was able to get one of my siblings who still speaks to me.”

“Amenadiel.”

“Assuredly not. I have one other for that. Azrael is many things, sometimes a bit flaky, but she was able to broker a deal with my sibling Duma. I like him best of all because he never speaks. I find most of my siblings would be improved by the silence.” He wheezed a bit as he spoke. “His history is his own and not my place to tell, but he also finds no real home in the Silver City and agreed to take the throne, like I said, for the duration.”

“So how long?” she asked, afraid it was a year or five or ten. That it would pass to quickly and like Cinderella and chiming midnight, he’d just be gone.

Lucifer offered her his attempt at his usual, easy debonair smile. With his purpled face, it didn’t quite work. “I do hate to put a fine point on things, Detective---”

“How long?”

“The duration means until you die and go to the Silver City, as I’m sure you will. After that, there won’t be anything on Earth I’d care to stay for anyway.”

She flinched at that, at the reminder that parting was inevitable, no matter what she wanted. That what they had by their very natures was here and now and never anything more. For her, that was still probably sixty years---and she’d have to take all her vitamins or do whatever it took to beg, borrow, and steal as many years as possible---but for someone as ancient as Lucifer actually was, “the duration” wouldn’t be more than a blink.

“Detective? Did I say something?” he said, his voice a bit muffled.

She could tell that Linda must have given him something for the pain, probably in desperation, and with her right here, it was probably actually working its way through Lucifer as if he were a normal person.

“No,” she said, lying down, and setting her head on his shoulder. “It’s perfect. I…thank you.”

“Oh, it was a lovely time had by all,” Lucifer said drolly. “I won’t say that stringing Dromos and Squee up by their entrails wasn’t enjoyable because those sods had it coming, but yes, let’s not repeat that.”

“I…it all happened because of Kinley and---”

“It happened because Hell always needs a Celestial to guard it, and I left my post. It was inevitable that the demons would get restless, especially once my brother was no longer even patrolling the gates.” He moved as best as he could and wrapped his arms around her torso, then kissed the crown of her head. “But I’m home, and it’s alright, Detective. Duma swore, and angels never break vows. We can’t. So, I’m yours for as long as you’ll have me. I promise that.”

She sniffled and kissed his lips, still ignoring the hints of ash and copper on her tongue. He was here. His wounds had been cared for, and alright, he was high as a kite on probably a lot of valium or Vicodin, but he was safe. The good part. “I think I can handle that.”

“Well, I should bloody well hope so. I come with a no returns policy.”


	6. Chapter Six

Claws and talons.

That was what even his Celestial vision could suss out in the onslaught. So many in the horde were anxious and angry and raring to get back at him in Hell. They weren’t happy he’d left. They weren’t happy he’d ordered them home and cut their fun short. They weren’t ready to accept his rule back, and Lucifer had known that was coming, had known they’d be ready to fight. It was just this time, he didn’t have Mazikeen by his side, keeping an eye on his back. He had himself, and that was all he had.

Another melee, another uprising that had broken out after Dromos’s public execution as if the bloody idiot were some kind of demon-martyr. Hardly. But it left Lucifer fighting for his life again, dragged away from a loop room door as he’d been taking inventory of the sinners and punishments section of Hell. Ganged up on by dozens of demons, all of them---him included---moving so quickly that the fight became more about instinct and movement. About the usual rhythms of battle more than seeing what was coming.

Rote practice, especially of late.

Lucifer dodged the latest blow aimed for his left eye and raked his left wing forward fast enough to gut the demon before him. He was just about to turn when strong talons raked into his back, down his midline and dragging deeply into the space where his right wing met his spine.

He shouted and felt his right wing go limp at his side. Turning, Lucifer pulled back to strike his opponent with a clenched fist. Would that he had some of Mazikeen’s blades with him. Piss poor plan, that, leaving them behind. But he arched his arm back, ready to land a blow against putrid flesh…

…when his arm smashed through his bedside table, splintering it to nothing.

He woke fully then, sitting up in bed and panting. The room was easy to see in even without lights on, always had been. Hell had no real light of its own, just the sickly grey glow that permeated through an endlessly dark landscape. But even as he blinked and tried to get a bearing on his surroundings, Lucifer knew he was seeing everything through a vaguely red film.

“Great, wonderful,” he said. Swallowing hard when Chloe sat up beside him.

She frowned and set a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay? Nightmares again?”

He blinked a few times, banishing even the hint of the Infernal side of himself away. She was okay with it now. In fact, in the month since he’d come back and eventually eased back into the consulting side of their relationship (favors he still had in spades to cash in while on Earth, and, to be blunt, the LAPD had hired worse than he), Lucifer had needed to draw on _that_ side of himself only briefly. He’d done it then, of course, to help save her life from a rather persistent and conniving suspect. Now a permanent patient at the same asylum that housed one Jimmy Barnes.

And how life always came full circle if one lived long enough.

Still, he didn’t like reminding her of it. Frankly, at home, he didn’t like reminding himself of it. Wasn’t one always a bit different on holiday anyway? Here…away from Hell, he didn’t have to be brutal or anything else he didn’t want to be.

Except at night, when the memories bothered him.

And that he hated worse than a little flash of quickly banished red eyes. It should be over. It shouldn’t cling to him so at night, causing him to ruin quite a few pieces of expensive furniture by now, and honestly, scaring him that one day it might be his detective he’d lash out and strike while deep in slumber. It shouldn’t…why did it have to follow and linger so? Linda had explained to him about PTSD, but he wasn’t human, so some human disorder shouldn’t apply to him.

Tell his bloody inconvenient nightmares that.

He sighed and for once wished he wasn’t always so honest. “Yes, but I do think they’re getting less frequent.” Lucifer hoped that was true. He hadn’t broken anything in the penthouse in almost a week---a current record---so that had to be a sign of improvement, didn’t it? He reached out and drew the detective close to him. Kissing her deeply before she pulled back.

“As much as I appreciate what you do, Lucifer…”

“Oh, and how,” he near-purred, putting every effort into distracting his detective with _anything_ else.

“Right, exactly, Casanova.”

“That wannabe learned everything from me.”  
  


“I do not want to know.”

He winked at her, trying to settle into levity as if it weren’t close to three a.m., and he hadn’t just smashed an end table. Again. “You probably don’t.”

She swallowed and looked away for a moment. They hadn’t yet…not that he bloody well didn’t want to. For her, it had been six years. Since time moved so very slowly in Hell, Lucifer couldn’t even say how long it had _felt_ for him, but he was fairly confident he was setting new records for blue balls. However, it had first taken over a week for his wing to heal and, honestly, for him to be able to focus around the painkillers and the nightmares to really know where he was for more than a few hours a time. Then, there was getting everything settled back at work, and _that_ still had its share of migraines, especially with one douche in particular being more hostile than ever towards him.

He couldn’t exactly fault Daniel for it, just hoped the Douche would come around eventually, if only for Chloe and Beatrice’s sakes.

And it just hadn’t seemed like the time for intimacy yet.

But she stayed over as many nights as she could, which was never quite enough because _all_ the time would be the only sufficient sleeping arrangement. Hence why, even now, he was going through real estate in L.A. in somewhere positively modest and suburban—Dad help him---so that he could offer the Detective a home of their own once the urchin left for college. He figured she’d never acquiesce to the style of luxury he preferred, but something homey (and far too Plebian but he was from Hell; he was used to suffering), she might just say yes to.

If he could just get these pesky nightmares behind him.

“Do you think you can get back to sleep?”

He nodded. “I don’t always have them.”

That was, technically, true. Sometimes, he dreamed of other things. Rarely were they pleasant. The memories of his fights and squabbles to regain the throne in Hell were the worst, the ones that jolted him out of bed, but lately all of his worst memories seemed to be gaining up on him: killing Uriel, Chloe’s face filled with shock when she saw him standing over Cain’s body, the utter shock and betrayal of finding out about her dealings with Kinley, that night of the masquerade at Lux…just so many things. He even dreamed far too often about _The Mayan_ , about the pile of dead bodies at his feet, that were his fault for dallying too far and too long away from his duties. But sometimes, in the middle of a parade of endless fights and regrets, there were good things: dreams of what he wanted to do with the Detective (and, much to his shock, not always sexual dreams either), memories of the good times on Earth from before, the very things he’d clung to below, occasionally even that odd recurring dream about being King of the centaur people, which was ridiculous as everyone knew centaurs were a matriarchal society but dare to dream…

Yet, the nightmares weighed heaviest on him and the need to be constantly alert as if Dromos, drawn, quartered, and thoroughly scattered to every corner of Hell by now, could ambush him a second time, tear this life out from under him again.

“They’ll get better,” he also offered. So far, they had; it was just so bloody inconvenient this was happening at all. He leaned down again and stole a kiss from her. “You don’t need to worry your pretty little head about me, Detective. I’ve had worse things.”

“Just because you’ve had worse makes this okay.”

He sighed. “I swear I get it on both ends, you know. Linda asks me in session about these a few times a week, and you…I just want to be better. No need to prattle on about things that will go away, is there?”

“There is if it’s bothering you for now.”

“I’m fine. I’m not in Hell, thus right as rain. Fit as a fiddle, whatever you’d like to call it,” he said, his tone slightly curt.

Her eyes were a bit shiny as she continued speaking, making the blue of her eyes even more crystalline and gorgeous to look at. Still, he loathed that he’d made her upset. It was supposed to be a relaxed Saturday night and tomorrow he’d been planning to take her to the beach. Just normal things. Normal things that normal boyfriends would do. Not talk of Hell. Again, not that his Detective couldn’t hack it by now, just that she shouldn’t _have to_.

“I just worry.”

“I know.”

“And I can’t be here all the time when you’re upset, and I know you’re confused sometimes where you even are when you wake up.”

He looked away out toward the doorway and into his great room. He concentrated on the polished lacquer of the Steinway’s top for once. Anything to avoid seeing her sadness. “True, but it will get better. I am trying. It’s merely that when I Fell…” he paused there because he never wanted to talk about that. With anyone. Even Maze had only heard bits and pieces once he’d been banished to Hell, enough to win over her loyalty, not enough to ever explain the utter futility and then agony of the failed Rebellion. “…the first time, I had no one to understand. Mazikeen was an ally but a demon, a pure demon, is hardly a comfort. She’s different now here, but I assure you, she had no human feelings or mercy back then. So, there was no one to listen. This was far less traumatic than that, so I don’t see the need to drag you down with me.”

The Detective bit her lower lip and sighed. Then she set her hand on his shoulder, easing him down onto the bed (alright, so he let her). Chloe cuddled closer to him, letting her chin rest on his chest as her golden hair fanned out across his skin. He’d created stars once not half as gorgeous in color as her hair. And Dear Dad, had he gone soft.

Then again, for her? Gladly so.

“But you don’t have to this time. I mean, if you need to talk about the fighting or the putting it all down with Amenadiel or Maze…they get all the battle things, the Celestial and Infernal necessities that maybe I never quite will.”

“I don’t wish for you to. It was brutal, but it was necessary. Demons understand power and blood. There is no reason there.”

“I know, and you have Linda for sorting out how you feel,” she continued. “But at night, you have me too when I’m over, and that’s a good thing. Eventually, you’re probably right, the nightmares won’t bother you, and you won’t wake up and have no idea where you are, that you’re not stuck back there in that literal, fucking hellhole.”

“Too true.”

“But, until then, I just wish I could be here more, but Dan can only take Trixie so much, and I do want to spend time with her before she goes off to the University of Washington. But I’m always a phone call away, you know? You can tell me anything.”

“I don’t want to burden---”

“It wouldn’t be.”

He sighed, unsure of how to explain any of it to her. That he was used to being attacked. He’d had it often---first from his own siblings, and he’d clearly instigated that but hadn’t anticipated he’d get exiled. Then, had come the first round of fights in Hell. He’d been terrible at first. Because fighting there was nothing like being an angel had been. Samael---who had had a myriad of faults---had thought still like the Host when he arrived. He’d worried about honor and dignity in battle. Demons cheated. As long as they were still alive and standing at the end, nothing else mattered. So, he’d learned to fight as dirty and as ruthlessly as they did till he’d _won_ and built a throne of his own making. One that, yes, only a Celestial could reach. Back and returned to Hell after everything with the prophecy, he’d started again, fighting twice as ruthlessly to compensate for lacking Mazikeen at his side. That didn’t bother him, even if he still woke with memories of talons tearing through his muscles and his wings.

No, it would bother him for her to actually know---not just suspect---the lengths he’d gone to for her and for his family. Anything but to push the Detective so far that she left.

Pain and fights and injuries, he could deal with.

Abandonment was unthinkable.

“Lucifer?” she prodded, studying him quietly. “It’s okay, really.”

“I just…” he paused and thought back to session with Linda from a couple days prior.

He wouldn’t relate exactly what he’d had to do to win in Hell. Never that, but he could explain how he felt. And human feelings were something he’d never quite be comfortable with on this plane. In Hell, the doubt faded as some of the sharpness of emotions did too. Not the desire for Chloe or the love of his family; that was constant. But everything else was lesser below, things more clear. Here, it was so awfully muddled.

He tried anyway and offered Chloe what he could, “…the other vacations I took were different. I was here for a few days, maybe a week or two or a bit more before Amenadiel shoved me back. I might have an orgy.”  
  


“Oh, just one?”  
  


“I was being polite, darling. But there were times I made friends too or just liked to see the world unfurl around me. You humans are so very interesting, I grant you that. Far better than angels or demons. The way you try---even though you have so little time---the way you always keep trying is remarkable to me. I like it. All that ‘rage against the dying of the light,’ is better than a hundred Silver Cities with their static nature. Definitely.”

“Cool, but I don’t know if I’m following,” she admitted.

He sighed and kissed her again before continuing, “This was my longest vacation by far because I actually quit.” And had leverage over Amenadiel but that was neither here nor there. “And I lost so much going back down. I left my friends, my family whether I care for screaming babies or not---”

“Well, he’s six now.”

“Yes, the perfect and prime age to by mysteriously sticky while grabbing at my designer suits, even better.”

“Lucifer!”

“Yes, well, anyhoo, I left you and everything I loved. I…had a home. I’ve never had that before. Heaven wasn’t ever home. The other angels were there, and at the time, Father and Mother, but it had stopped being home so long before I Fell that it didn’t ache the way it did this time. Don’t get me wrong. Hell is always Hell, but I had nothing back in the Silver City I wanted. I just didn’t want to be trapped in a land of ash and Sulphur. This time, I spent every second of every day of every year…” and it had felt like _centuries_ without her. “…wanting to be just here, like now, with you.”

“I’m sorry this happened at all.”

“True, but I am thankful, that for now, Duma and the Lilim have it covered.”

Her eyes were even shinier then, and he wasn’t sure what he’d even said to make her sad, but he felt like an utter git when she started to cry. Reaching out, Lucifer stroked one cheek. “Detective, I thought that would make you feel better.”

“I…I’m sorry. I guess, I just realized that it’ll be that much worse when ‘the duration’ is done,” she said, affecting a truly pathetic British accent (not that his was actually real, but it was a question of quality here) to describe his euphemism for the deal he’d struck with his brother.

He nodded, and Dr. Linda would say this whole approach was unwise and that he was in denial, but sometimes denial was needed to survive. He’d learned that early on after his Fall as well. Lucifer couldn’t even imagine a life without Chloe Decker in it by his side, so he just wouldn’t. When the time came---Dear Dad he’d do _anything_ for it to be as long as possible---but when it came, then he’d fall apart. For now, he had the time he had, and he wasn’t going to waste any of it.

Hence, the utter frustration with the dreams and the need for the nightmares to kindly fuck off.

“Then don’t think about it. You get the good end of the deal, Detective. After this, you’ll go to Heaven, which while terribly boring, is lovely in its own way, paradise and all that. You’ll see your father again, and someone as good as you will find it quite enjoyable.” He was forcing his tone to be light, but the words didn’t quite sound the way he wanted them to no matter what.

“But you---”

“I Fell, and I went back recently to set things right after an unfathomable number of scrapes, Chloe. When the time comes, it’ll be easier in some ways. I won’t have to spend years fighting every demon in existence to keep them under heel. I suppose, by then, Mazikeen will return with me, unless she intends to become a guardian demon of sorts for Charlie and his progeny, which, to be fair, may yet happen. However,” he said, holding her tightly against him. “I’ll survive. I won’t be fine because we both know I won’t, and I don’t lie, but I’ll survive because, like you humans, adapting is something I’ve learned to do.”

And that was true enough, though surviving without Chloe Decker would be a hollow existence at best, which was why it would no longer matter if he were on Earth after her or not. It would be worse, somehow, being in Los Angeles or anywhere else _after_. It would remind him of her all the more. Somehow, when “the duration” was over, Hell would be a comfort, but he didn’t offer her that. He wasn’t sure even as much as she wanted to, that as a mortal, Chloe could understand the sentiment.

“But, again, you seem rather healthy, Detective, and you’ve a guardian devil on your shoulder and watching that lovely backside of yours on patrol. I don’t anticipate coming to a crossroads with this until you’re in your 100s, at least.”

She blanched. “No pressure.”

“None indeed, my dear,” he said, winking at her.

The detective was quiet for a while before pulling back and sitting up. At first, he assumed she had to get up to grab water or use the restroom, but, instead, she unclasped a small, silver charm bracelet from around her wrist. He’d noticed her wearing it before, especially during the long week of Perry Smith’s trial, but he’d had so very much more on his mind in Hell and hadn’t thought of it in years.

“Here,” she said, setting the modest bracelet in his hands. “My dad gave me this when I got my ‘big break,’ ugh, in _Hot Tub High School_.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It was dumb and cheesy, and you’re not wrong, it _was_ a rip-off of _Fast Times at Ridgemont High_. But Dad was so proud. He started saying the minute I got the part how his Little Monkey was going be a star. He got me this charm bracelet somewhere, and all the charms are different stars because of it. You know, a different color non-precious gem in it. I…it was the last thing he gave me.”

“Well, darling, it’s fetching but it’s hardly going to fit on my wrist.”  
  


The detective rolled her eyes. “It’s a loaner, for now. I mean, when I can’t be here, just you can hold it and know I’m just in my apartment, and I’ll be here as soon as I can in the morning if the nightmares are really bad, you know?”

“I still can’t pilfer this. It was your father’s gift for you, and you actually liked your dad.”

“Very much, but I want you to have it. Once the nightmares get tamped down, I’ll take it back. Deal?”

He wasn’t sure he wanted the responsibility for such a gift, but he was nothing if fastidious and there was no way the bracelet would get lost in his home. Nodding, he took the small silver set of links from her and shoved them in the pocket of his pyjama bottoms.

“It’s a lovely thought, Chloe.”

“Well, I figure I owed you a gift by now. Do you know how many spoons I have?”

He blushed at that, feeling the heat come to his cheeks. And he thought he’d been embarrassed before. “I may have lost count myself. What’s your estimate?”

“At least twenty!”

“Yes, to be fair Hell is _very boring…_ ”


	7. Chapter Seven

How foolish.

How utterly buggered up and pathetic.

The Detective was supposed to come by after having a day of shopping with her mother, which, to be fair, was an ill omen if Lucifer had ever heard of one. But when he’d proposed a special moonlit dinner on his penthouse balcony to celebrate his third month back and his first full week without any nightmares at all (maybe there was something to having the Detective’s charm bracelet with him, like a totem), he hadn’t anticipated Penelope being back in town. While he found the woman absolutely lovely, he knew she set the Detective’s hackles up. Parents had that gift, apparently, Celestial or not. Still, with Penelope’s impromptu visit and demands for mother-daughter-granddaughter time, Lucifer was sure that the Detective would be in a less-than-stellar mood.

But he didn’t want to cancel either.

Because while he never lied, Lucifer did skate the truth sometimes. As the delightful Miss Lopez had once declared, he tended to _bluff_ from time to time, and he had something he’d desperately wanted to talk with the Detective about. He’d found the top contenders for real estate in the suburbs (again, the sacrifices he made), and he wanted to address their future. After so many years, especially for him, Lucifer no longer desired to wait any longer.

But dinner dates for them had a poor track record at best. So, he was anxious and about as pathetically overeager for the Detective to arrive already as a damn schoolboy, which he was anything _but_. It was unbecoming for the Devil, but such was the effect his miracle had on him.

By the time the Detective came up, the Italian he’d ordered from _Vicelli’s_ had arrived and he’d laid it out on the table. He’d mixed things up a bit between what she’d call exorbitantly priced food (but, to be fair, he got _Vicelli_ the loan for his first location so the takeout didn’t cost anything even if it was from a chef with quite the collection of Michelin stars by now) but he had also deigned to buy her favorite type of key lime pie from Costco. Dear Dad, he’d begged Amenadiel to get it for him. He loved the Detective, he did, but there were some quests the Devil simply did _not_ embark on. Lucifer had that pie and also purchased her favorite turpentine-disguised-as-eleven-dollar-wine from the grocery store.

See? He could do suburbia.

Mostly.

Anything to distance this dinner from the first he’d ever tried to officially hold for her here, the overly fancy one to out show that clod Cain.

But a half-hour later, his Detective stormed off the elevator and clomped to the balcony, her expression seething. To be fair, it didn’t distract one bit from how ethereally lovely she looked (and Lucifer would know) in her cobalt blue, tea-length dress, one that somehow made the silver of her bullet-necklace shine all the more under the moonlight.

“Was it that taxing, Darling?” he asked, pulling her closely and giving her a long, lingering kiss.

She sighed. “Oh, even more than you can imagine. Mom started lunch by telling both me and Trixie to skip sandwiches and go for a salad. She said I was putting on weight, which maybe some because you know not 18 anymore or trying to be an ingenue, Mother.”

To be fair, if the Detective had of late or while he’d been gone, Lucifer hadn’t noticed.

“But she shouldn’t be giving my kid a complex. Trixie’s about to try eating on her own in college, and I don’t want her to get an eating disorder cause my mom’s nuts. Bonus, she also spent the whole day hinting that Trixie really should just put college ‘on hold’ for a few years and try acting because it’s a family tradition. I doubt being the Vampire Queen of Venus and not-Phoebe Cates are exactly the best traditions.”

“Oh, surely, it wasn’t that bad,” he offered, trying to diffuse the situation. Lucifer figured the best place to start was pouring her a generous glass of that swill she liked. He did so and handed her the glass while fishing his flask from his pocket.

“It was _worse_ because mom was on Trixie also about her plans to major in volcanology.”

“Like that fellow with the pointy ears on _Star Trek_?”

The Detective took a long sip and glared at him. “No, that’s a Vulcan, and how do you even know that?”

“First, I was here in the 60s, and I had to admire Kirk’s style.”

“Oh, I bet. Not an alien he didn’t sleep with, right?”

“Adventure in bed is something to be respected,” Lucifer added, winking at her.

“Uh-huh.”

“Also, of course, the lovely Miss Lopez makes me watch things with her on Tuesdays at her flat. We’re working through so, so many of these sodding series. It’s clearly become far more popular than when it got canceled in the ‘60s.”

“Sure, right,” the Detective continued, finishing her glass and pouring a second one. “But volcanologists study volcanoes.”

“Yes, I do know that. I was mostly having a go at you. Polyglot, Detective. I speak everything, and I definitely have Latin covered.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. He might truly be entering dangerous territory here. Half the hordes of Hell had nothing on an irate Chloe Decker. “Anyway, Mom tells her to at least pick English or maybe a nice romance language to study because boys never marry the smart girls. Can you believe that?”

“What did Beatrice say, dear?”

“Well, she was the one who pretended Dan texted her early for pick up and get us out of there before time was technically up.” She blushed a little, the most enticing hint of pink coloring her cheeks, as she seemed to realize what she just admitted. “I’m sorry I’m late; that’s never like me.”

“First, darling, the party couldn’t start without you. After all, our dinner means you’re the guest of honor.”

“You lay it on thick when you want to.”

He smirked at that and sat down finally at the table across from her. “It’s one of my charms.”

“Yes, finally starting to see those now.”

“I’m rather glad for that,” he riposted. “May I ask what took so long then?”

“I just…I needed a few minutes and, okay, might have dug out an old punching bag of Maze’s she didn’t take with her when she moved out to beat the shit out of. I mean, I do love my mom, but I don’t want her giving Trixie terrible advice! I’m sure you’ve guessed, but Mom was the one who pressured me to do that stupid movie anyway.”

Lucifer tried to keep the dreamy expression off his face. “I did rather fancy you in that, though. I shall never say a disparaging word about that treasure of cinema.”

“Not in the mood,” she groused, finishing her second glass.

He nodded and set a hand over hers. “Detective, I know how taxing parents can be. Believe me, I have the market cornered on dysfunctional families---first and most fucked up. However, if Beatrice was the one to find a way out of the festivities early, then it’s quite clear that she has a good head on her shoulders and wants to go to college and study what she’s chosen. I think she’ll be fine.”

“I know, and my monkey’s too smart to care about that awful ‘then boys won’t like you’ crap, but just once can’t my mom just be happy with how I’m doing.” She sighed. “Alright, she was thrilled that you’re back and that we had dinner plans. You, she likes.”

“What’s not to like?”

“Yes, but the rest of me, well, I think she’s still mad I became a cop and not an actress. Again, not that I was a very good actress.”

“Agree to disagree,” he said, smiling. “Well, as lovely as she is, erm, to me at least, let’s not dwell on Penelope any longer, shall we? Tonight,” he said, sipping from his flask. She might like grocery store “wine,” but he wasn’t going to drink it. “…is about us.”

She grinned back at him and gave that appalling bad imitation of his accent. “About bloody time, right?”

“Oh Detective, you have to stop doing that.”

**

The dinner had, for once, been a success. However, considering any others they’d attempted at his penthouse had resulted in stewardess interruptus, a huge fight, and her almost poisoning him with Vatican who-knew-what, then it wasn’t necessarily a high bar to cross. Lucifer was aware of that. But it felt relaxed in a way things had only been between them since his return. The year before he’d left had been Hell in its own way with her betrayal and obvious fear of his nature. Then, when things could have been possible or maybe just easy with no secrets between them, he'd had to leave. But now, it was them and all the time that Chloe had to give, and they sat, drank, talked about work, and joked about other things in utter comfort.

Then, the end of the dinner came, and Lucifer felt like a schoolboy again, felt the panic and the anxiety lancing through him, and it was so utterly ridiculous that the Devil would be afraid of anything, let alone the reaction and opinions of one mortal woman. But it was as it was, and Chloe Decker owned him body and soul. He just hoped that the feeling was mutual. As he cleared the detritus of dinner to his bar, he left her to lean against the balcony and look out at the stars and the moonlight of Los Angeles.

Granted, it was hard to see a fraction of any heavenly bodies with the light pollution, but the Detective was a city girl, born and bred, and she probably didn’t know the difference. Clearly, as a human, she’d never seen a galaxy unfurled before her, reveled in the joy of its creation. But for what it could be, the view afforded by his balcony was rather lovely. And, bluntly put, the best money could buy. One reason, even after he’d had more options while on holiday, he’d stuck with his current address.

Lucifer swept up his parcels for the Detective and stepped out to the balcony again. The moonlight played over her fair skin and bathed her in a silvery glow that made her eyes seem as blue as a mountain lake and highlighted her beauty mark all the more. Dear Dad, just seeing her made his heart ache.

“I…I’ve something for you,” he said, trying to and clearly failing for insouciance.

The Detective smiled at him. “Really, you don’t have to do more. It was really nice, Lucifer. I needed that, especially after Mom.”

“Yes, well, I had some things for you anyway.” He swallowed hard, ignoring the dryness of his throat before pulled out the first package from behind his back. “I suppose you might know what this is.”

She laughed at the long, oblong box. Taking it from him, she opened the paper delicately, something he never understood. The way the urchin did it, ripping into the paper with abandon, always made more sense. Who saved the wrapping after all? Why not buy more? However, the Detective peeled it off slowly, almost reverently, before she set the wrapping in the chair nearest her. Opening the box, she chuckled at the lovespoon he carved out of a light piece of teak.

“I should get a shadow box for mine. I did count, you know. This is number twenty-seven. I don’t think you have to make anymore, now that I have you back home.”

He nodded. “True, and it was a mix of slightly embarrassing and truly frustrating that the best thing I could do to communicate to you was send these ruddy things or some volcanic glass.”

“Trixie loved the stones, and how you knew---”

“I can hear prayers. It’s rather inconvenient, and I don’t know if the offspring guessed or dragged such a fact out of my brother.”

“You can what?”

“Well, I can, but I block them out because, not to put a fine point on it, no one worth listening to usually beseeches me. Besides, unless you’re also a Celestial, it’s a one-way bit of communique.”

“Oh,” she sighed. “Wish I’d known.”

“There were so many things we should have gotten to before, but you have all the time you wish to ask me anything you like,” he replied. “However, I’ve two questions to ask first.”

“Yes, I do like the spoons. They’re not what I’d have seen you picking up as a hobby, but I genuinely like every single one. Don’t be so sensitive.”

“I am not. I’m very low maintenance.”

The Detective had the gall to snort back at him. How dare she. “You, Lucifer Morningstar, are many, many things but low maintenance has _never_ been one of them.”

“Slander!” he said, chuckling a little. Lucifer stepped closer to her so that his breath was on her cheek as he pointed to the design of the lovespoon. “Did you ever look up all the meanings? I figured Maze would tell you at least what they were or, well, it is the 21st century and I trusted that the urchin could reverse image search sufficiently.

The Detective nodded. “Yeah, the knots are to show dedication because it takes so long to carve those, and the hearts are obvious.”

“Love,” he supplied, his voice dipping into a lower register.

She nodded. “Yes, always.” The Detective frowned down at the bells that were dotted in between each heart. “I…it’s been a while since I was up on all of it. The last three months were busy.”

“Understatement,” he supplied.

“But I don’t know that one. You never…it’s new.”

He nodded and tried to ignore the way his heart felt like it was about to burst through his sternum. It was beating so very hard. Lucifer, who was one in odd ways for traditions after all, got to one knee and pulled the velvet box from his pocket.

“Then, I should tell you that I never carved the bells before because it would have been cruel and pointless if I never was able to come back, or if I’d come home too late.” He cracked the box open, revealing the if-she-knew-she’d-object, _many_ carats diamond to her, a blue one to match her eyes. “Chloe Jane Decker, she of the most boring of middle names, would you marry me?”

She seemed a bit like a hare caught in the headlights as she looked between him knelt before her and the spoon in her hand. “What?”  
  


“Aren’t going hard of hearing already, are we?” he asked. “Will you marry me?”

She nodded and he slid the ring onto her finger, admiring how it, too, glinted in the moonlight. Breathtaking but far from the most beautiful thing about the woman before him, the one brave enough to love the Devil himself.

“I…” her voice wavered before she could complete her thoughts. “I thought you weren’t the marrying type.”

He shrugged. “I think we can both agree on two points, erm, one you may not exactly be thrilled to hear.”

“Oh.”  
  


Lucifer reached out and grabbed her shoulders gently and squeezed them before pulling her tightly against his chest. “I have had so very much fun in my long, wicked life, but, that said, it was only fun. It was transient and meaningless. Yes, desires were met and such, but it was empty in so many ways. It makes me a bit pathetic and extraordinarily whipped so if you mention it to my idiot brother, I’ll deny it, but I would rather spend a hundred years with you going over case files than head to another orgy.”

The part left unsaid between them and that he hoped she’d never voice out loud was that, eventually, “the duration” would be over, and if he so wanted, he could still holiday briefly to start partying all over again. He wasn’t sure he ever would, and, like everything else about _then_ , Lucifer swept it under the rug in his mind and forced denial to cover the rest of him like a warm and comforting blanket.

“Still…if you don’t---”

“And all I thought about for far too bloody long in Hell was you, was every good moment we’d ever had together, and I want this very much, Chloe. So, will you make an honest man out of me.”

Her eyes teared up a little and she snorted again. “Lucifer, it’s far too late for me to save your virtue.”

“True, but it might make me a sight more respectable, what do you say?”

She kissed him, and his Detective knew how to do some truly sinful things with her tongue. The minx. “Yes, of course. If that’s what you _desire_ ,” she said, at least this time only forcing her voice to a tenor and not trying to fake Britishness.

Leave that to the professionals.

“I do,” he replied, kissing her back. “But I also desire so much more right now, Detective. I…would you like to take this to the bedroom? I think this calls for one Hell of a consummation, pun intended.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @zeearts on tumblr had a beautiful illustration for this here - https://zeearts.tumblr.com/post/190845208785/for-thedeckerstarnetwork-valenteam-challenge-for
> 
> So check out the balcony scene in living color ;)


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coughs, and this would be where the magic happens, coughs ;) - NSFW

As Lucifer led her to his bedroom, Chloe couldn’t quite make herself believe anything was real. Yes the engagement ring certainly felt heavy on her fingers, and the spoon she’d set on the couch had been real enough to the touch, but after six years of waiting for him to come home and three months of just trying to get back to a regular rhythm, of trying to be ready to be where they’d _felt_ they were on the verge of before…it had seemed like decades and not years to get to this.

And she’d be lying if she didn’t admit she was nervous.

How couldn’t she be? She wasn’t afraid of Lucifer anymore; that time had long since passed. However, his experience was obvious. Hell, he’d inspired the _Kama Sutra_ , and she wasn’t a blushing virgin. Obviously, Trixie was proof of that, but she wasn’t thousands of years of orgies and always saying yes to things either. It was one thing for him to say that he wanted her for as long as he could, that he could give up the wild side of life…even the things Eve did to make him happy (or at least try).

What if she wasn’t enough?

These thoughts were weighing on her as they stopped at the threshold of his bed. Lucifer was already slipping off his suit coat when he eyed her thoughtfully.

“Detective, is everything alright?”

She blinked and reached for the zipper of her dress, but her hands were shaking too much to find purchase. Lucifer moved over to her and took the lead, his long fingers straying down the curve of her neck and then moving to her shoulders, massaging them a little before they drifted to the back of her neck and the zipper.

“Are you unsure?” he asked, his voice raw and vulnerable.

“No, not like that.” She held up her left hand. “After everything we’ve been through, I’d say yes a million times over. It’s just…I…big step, and it’s been a while for me and---”

Lucifer kissed the side of her neck, his tongue eventually tracing patterns only he knew in the hollow of her throat by her left clavicle. “To be honest, Detective, Hell didn’t offer any chance for any release either.”

“I know, and I just…” She took a deep breath and forced herself to say the next few words. It was probably too much worry and a stupid voice in her head, but she’d had so much rejection in her life. From Lucifer running hot and cold, which she understood now but it had still scarred her, _then_ to Marcus rejecting her “I love you” and later turning out to be a murdering psychopath. The _original_ murdering psychopath. Rejection had been burnt into her memory for years. “What if I’m not enough?”

“Ah, that’s it then,” he replied, finally undoing her zipper. She stepped out of the dress after it pooled at her feet but didn’t make a step to the bed just yet. He was still there, his tall, lithe shape casting quite the shadow over her, and she loved the way his hands felt as they ran their way up and down her ribs. “Chloe, I promise you and you know I don’t like, but we could literally spend the next sixty years having a staring contest, and I’d be happier and more fulfilled than with any of my wildest parties at Lux.”

She swallowed. “I know.”

He leaned lower so that he was whispering close to her ear. Lucifer lowered his voice a bit when he spoke next, some low and baritone that made her most sensitive bundle of nerves throb, and made Chloe realize that even with all her doubts between her own desire and how long they’d both waited…she wouldn’t be able to delay any longer.

“Darling, you don’t. Not yet, but I think after tonight you very much will.” Strong hands gripped her shoulder and coaxed her to spin around for him.

She looked up into eyes so deep and brown that they most certainly were a window to his soul, more so than even his red ones, which for a confused and shameful time in Rome that she tried not to think about much, Chloe had assumed and fretted were the real ones. Now, she knew they both were, but this was a gentle night. Even if she felt like she had something to prove, tonight was for the tenderness denied them both with his work in Hell.

“That seems like quite the promise,” Chloe breathed.

He smirked, and that insufferable look was the same as the one he’d sported when he’d figured out who she actually was and which terrible almost film she’d been semi-famous in. “Oh, _Detective_ , it’s my most solemn vow.” He leaned low to kiss her, his tongue doing truly sinful things to her own before he pulled back and reached for the buttons of his vest. “Do us a favor, Detective, and slip onto the covers, would you?”

She frowned back at him. “Are you sure?”

“Of course,” he practically purred. “A little bit of a good show before I come for you.”

She rolled her eyes and had to hand it to him. There was still a small ball of anxiety curled in her gut, but bit by bit, Lucifer’s usual, well, Luciferness was shrinking it down. The smirk and the jokes, the way he obviously was thrilled to strip down for her. All this she knew. Because it was _him_ , most of this she’d known since the beginning of just their working relationship as detective and consultant. But it was reassuring, that the new change in their status wasn’t going to change them. That she could be enough.

She did as he asked and went a bit farther than that, undoing the clasp of her bra and slipping it from her before she slid into bed. Propping herself up on too many pillows, Chloe arched an eyebrow back at him and watched.

“I think you are promising a show.”

“Nothing too long. Honestly, love, I’m going to die if we wait much longer,” he said, his smirk never faltering, exactly, but slipping into something gentle and almost shy, a look only she ever saw on him.

Maybe just a hint of the angel he was, even if he never felt that was true.

Lucifer continued to the buttons of his shirt, and even if he said he wouldn’t prolong it, he still took time to do each one with slow, sensual grace. Not that pretty much everything he did wasn’t done with preternatural grace and skill. It was probably an added bit of casual blasphemy that a Celestial being used all his skills and gifts to make seduction more enticing. Once he finished with the buttons, he slid the shirt off, and she forced herself not to lick her lips at the expanse of his abs and the sharp planes of his hips.

He reached for his belt next, and she couldn’t help but sit up more, and maybe---okay a lot---press her legs together even as her clit throbbed more and the wetness began to pool between thighs.

Lucifer made quick work of the belt, and then unbuttoned his pants, sliding his slacks off easily as his hardness became readily apparent because, of course the Prince of Darkness didn’t wear underwear. He still seemed to puzzle when they got ready in the mornings whenever she was over at the penthouse with the fact she bothered to for herself. Some human things, she assumed, he’d just never follow. Or kowtow to. In this case, it was quite the advantage.

He grinned now, more of that swagger back in his expression as he strode to the bed, the moonlight playing over ever ridge of muscle in his lean and strong frame. She expected him to crawl up from the foot of the bed, to stalk her like the jungle cat he sometimes reminded her of, but he didn’t.

Instead, he sat down beside her on the mattress. He reached down to stroke her stomach at first with his right hand and then let those fingers stray until they started to tickle and caress one peaked nipple.

“I want this more than anything,” he said.

“I do too.”

He nodded. “Indeed, I can tell.”

She wasn’t sure if it was just her position on the bed, the way she mewled---and she’d usually been very quiet in bed before---just by him massaging one breast, or the fact that he was _Lucifer_ and could read desire on almost anyone the way a weatherman could tell when a storm was brewing. Maybe all three, but she’d bet on his preternatural gift for understanding desire, herself, even if making her reveal it was something he could not do.

“However, Chloe,” he said, his tone solemn. “I admit that even if you feel overwhelmed because of my experience.”

She grimaced a little at that even his other hand reached out to attend to her other breast and, by now, she was truly making some embarrassing noises. She’d be self-conscious later. Right now, it just felt so damn good, emphasis on the _damn_.

“I am at a loss as well because I can’t read your desires as easily as I normally would.” A blush of all things colored his cheeks. She almost chuckled. She, very plain and so very mortal Chloe Jane Decker, had made the Devil blush.

“Oh, so it was kind of like having cheat codes.”

He squeezed her left breast just a bit more roughly and relaxed again as he spoke. “Not exactly, but I suppose it gave me more of an advantage than most.”

“Definitely.”

“So, Detective, this is a first time in many ways for both of us. I don’t want you to feel like you’re the only one who’s nervous. A Devil has a reputation to live up to after all.”

She grinned genuinely up at him. And then had to wait to speak as one hand had snaked its way south, and his fingers were stroking her labia slowly. She shivered, moaned, and was glad that the penthouse was nowhere near anything (the intervening floors just used for storage).

“Well, I promise I’ll tell you everything I _desire_ ,” she said, even if she hadn’t really been much of a talker in bed before, Chloe also assumed that was something Lucifer would need, at least since she seemed to be a bit of his blind spot, for good or ill.

“Then,” he said, shifting his position and straddling over her on the bed. “Then, I think we’ve an understanding, Chloe.”

He leaned down to kiss her again, and she paused, even with his fingers playing with her most sensitive lips and his thumb getting dangerously near her clit and, thus, on its way to short-circuiting what was left of coherent thought.

Still, something dawned on her. She dodged away from his lips and brought her fingers to his own to shush him before he objected. “I…protection?”

She squeaked that part out, feeling awkward and eighteen again and in her trailer on the set of _Hot Tub High School_ , sneaking something _more_ between takes with her co-star, Devon. Conversations like this always made her feel young and naïve somehow, even if it was quite practical, especially considering they all knew now Nephilim were a thing.

He quirked his head at her and laughed. His mirth grew until he threw his head back and seemed to almost choke trying to get in more air. “Oh, Detective, how positively earnest. No, Charlie is a one-off. My brother was mortal at the time, and I most sincerely am not. Also, of course, I can neither catch nor spread human diseases.”

She snorted and could not resist the barb. “That’s actually a relief for what? Half of Los Angeles?”

He smirked. “Oh, Chloe, a gentleman never kisses and tells, but again, as charming as that thought was, you’re more than safe, and I want to come inside of you, to _feel_ all of you, since I finally bloody well can.”

She nodded, and they both shifted on the bed a little awkwardly. He left her hips and she bucked them up just enough for him to slip---okay, more like shred---her panties from her. She settled herself back on the mattress and spread her knees wide, offering him access to anything and everything he wanted. He smiled and crawled back over on top of her, his erection at first pressed thick and heavily between their hips. She was so wet then and her clit was angrily protesting the loss of his fingers. She squirmed a bit under him because release was all she needed now.

 _He_ was all she needed.

Lucifer kissed her again with all the thirst of a man who was slowly dying in the desert. It was needy and hungry and everything in between and he nibbled at her lips even as he pulled away. “You’re ready?”

She nodded, and he entered her slowly. Even if she were so very wet, it had been a while since anyone, and, to put it mildly, Lucifer had every right to brag and strut about his assets. It took some time with him entering her inch by fulfilling inch and she moving her hips around a bit to accommodate him. As he slid slowly in, Lucifer brought his mouth to her left breast, letting his tongue trace lazy circles over her nipple even as the fingers of his other hand found her clit.

She bucked up at that, the pure blaze of pleasure rioting through her, and he was finally in all the way, and she could feel the heaviness of his body over hers, the girth of him filling her, and the scent of his aftershave and the sandalwood shampoo he liked filling her nostrils. The sheets slid easily underneath her, silk of some thread count that mere mortals probably didn’t even know existed yet, and everything was too much and not enough all at once.

Lucifer rolled his hips and again she lifted hers to meet him, and they were off then. At first, it was clear from the slow yet teasing rhythm Lucifer established, that he was trying to stave it all off, to make it last for her. Chloe appreciated the sentiment, but between all their missed connections and flirting and everything else for over a decade, that just wasn’t going to happen. In truth, she was as frantic as he was, and she raked her fingernails across the length of his back.

He hissed and blinked back up at her, confusion and amusement dancing in his eyes. “Chloe?”

“Harder. I…next time sweet, totally, but I just… _fuck me_ , Lucifer.”

He blinked again, as if the man who spoke every language still couldn’t quite process her words. Then, Chloe raked her nails a bit harder against his skin again and bucked her hips faster, and something red and devious flashed in his eyes. The Devil quickened his pace, and they were then a mass of roving hands, hungry mouths, and his cock buried deeply inside of her, giving her everything she ever wanted.

And it felt as good as she always imagined, even way back when half drunk on her cab ride over to Lux the night he turned her down. It was everything his reputation had given him, and it was everything she’d dreamed of on her good nights while he was away, and she was drowning in loneliness. Lucifer’s breaths started coming in ragged gasps, and Chloe vaguely registered how much she was screaming, how the frantic flick of his thumb over her clit and the length of him pounding into her had her utterly on edge.

He came first, spilling into her, cum dripping down her thigh and she was so close, so very, very close. And, maybe later this would embarrass him, but it wasn’t quite until his wings unfurled---and that would so be a conversation some time---and she saw them in all their splendor, saw him with his jaw slack and his pupils blown wide, at the satisfaction she’d put there that Chloe climaxed too, great waves of pleasure sweeping over her until she finally stilled and closed her eyes.

She was aware of some things in the haze of the afterglow. Lucifer, wings still out, had left the bed long enough to get to the bathroom and wash off a bit and thoughtfully bring her a towel as well. He cleaned her up, hands soft and gentle where earlier they’d been as frenetic and needy as her own.

Eventually, higher thought returned to Chloe and she scooted over to the edge when he slipped in beside her, spooning against her and already he was semi-hard, and right the Devil so refractory period was not a thing for him as much as needing to catch a breath would be for her in their relationship.

That was definitely a perk.

He curled closer around her, and when one wing fell over her too, it was like being wrapped in the world’s warmest and most unconventional electrical blanket. Lucifer took in a deep breath and rumbled a bit against her, and Chloe was infinitely glad he seemed as content as he was. She’d thought…but then again the fact that he had to work for it with her, that he couldn’t just elicit her desires with a command probably did scare him too, that they were both exploring something new and where they weren’t experts made her comfortable.

Hell, if that was their version of a fumbling beginning, she couldn’t wait for more and, again, with his hardness pressed between her ass, clearly Lucifer couldn’t either. It was just…at least she felt like enough, for once.

“Did I tire you out?” She teased.

Lucifer sighed and kissed the hollow of her throat. “Told you, you’d be excellent, darling. The Devil never lies.”

She laughed because that much was true, but it was also oddly touching for Lucifer to have so much faith in her as a lover. To know that at least for now, she was meriting it. “Next time, I promise the slow and lovey kind. I think a decade of foreplay was enough, thank you.”

“More than that,” he mumbled.

“Huh?”

“Time,” he said, the sleepiness creeping into his voice. “it moves differently in Hell. Felt like centuries this time around stomping down the demon hordes.”

She stilled then. No one had told her that. She could have asked more about Hell while he was gone, had at first with Maze, but the demon had told her that the more she knew, the less she’d be able to concentrate on her life here. Amenadiel had said it was as bad as she thought and, often, even worse. _Neither_ had told her time didn’t move the same. Suddenly, even with the divine light pooled all around her, Chloe felt cold.

It was bad enough thinking about “the duration” when she assumed it would just be Lucifer dealing with eternity without her, and perhaps none of it mattered because time was relative and eternity was eternity, but it made her nauseated to think that in Hell it would feel somehow even longer and more drawn out. She sighed, and his arms seemed to tighten around her as a reflex.

“Chloe?” He asked, raising his head from his pillow, brown eyes so very concerned. “Is something wrong? Did I do something?”

“No, I just…I’m sorry it was longer.”

“Hell’s just full of fun ways to torment,” he replied, shrugging before setting his head on his hand and keeping himself propped up to face her fully. “I’m back now. It’s the good part.”

She nodded and kissed him. Then, turning back toward the nightstand on her side, caught sight of the silver charm bracelet she’d loaned him. Picking it up, she handed it back to him. “I want you to do me a favor.”

He smirked at her. “Detective, I’m quite sure this won’t fit; mind’s not changed on that.”

Chloe snorted and rolled her eyes. “Clearly, once Trixie’s in college, we’ll be living together full time.”

“As long as you’ll have me,” he said, his voice brimming with sincerity.

“Then for a very long time,” she replied. “If I need the bracelet to wear or to go out in or whatever, I’ll have access to it.”

He frowned. “I don’t understand.”

She sighed and turned fully to face him. Reaching out, she stroked a few errant curls back from his forehead. He definitely looked younger this way, deceiving as that might have been, without so much damn product. But the Devil was nothing if not vain.

“It’s a gift, Lucifer. I want you to keep the bracelet, now and…” she couldn’t say anything else at first. Even the euphemism of “the duration” they’d settled on felt too heavy on her tongue. After a few deep breaths, Chloe could finally speak. “…it’s yours because I might have like twenty-seven spoons and now a rock that J-Lo would be jealous of.”

“I refuse to be modest in this case.”

Despite the gravity of everything, Chloe had to laugh. Her partner---her _fiancé_ now---was many things, but modest had never been one of them. “Well, I suppose that’s fair, but I have so many thoughtful gifts from you. I mean it. I can have it when I need it. But I want you to keep the bracelet, always. You know, to remember me by.”

His eyes seemed shinier then. But maybe that was her imagination as he set the bracelet on his night table this time. “Feel free to ask me back for it all the time, darling, because I’d hardly want to deprive you of your father’s gift at any point.”

“I’m sure,” she said, kissing him.

“But,” he said, his voice falsely bright. “You won’t be going anywhere for a very long time if yours truly can help it, so it’s a sweet gift, very thoughtful, but you needn’t worry about it now.”

She wanted to object, even now to talk about the shadow of _after_ , but he wouldn’t let her. Soon, his tongue was over her breast again, and his length entering her, and all higher thought was a pipe dream. It was merely her and her Devil, the way she’d dreamed of.

And it was everything Chloe Decker had ever wanted and more.


	9. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair point, this has a lot of angst in it so been forewarned on the epilogue.

He notices.

People ask, you know. They love to ask. What’s the strangest thing you see on this job? Are there ghosts? Ever hear weird noise in the cemetery at night? There’s been more than one bozo that’s asked Carl if he’s ever, you know, had sex with a corpse at the funeral home. Those jerk-offs meet his fist soon after, such a fucking stupid question.

But yeah?

Weird shit, he’s seen it. Never seen a ghost, exactly. But he’s heard weird creaks at night that maybe, when he’s tired down in the embalming room, could almost be shrieks. He’s broken up idiot teenagers in too much dark makeup trying to invoke Satan or some other weird ass séance shit. Personally, Carl’s not very religious, but he figures if there was a real devil, he’d have better stuff to do than babysit _Hot Topic_ rejects.

But the weird? Yeah, _Oak Hills_ has one of those.

He noticed about twenty years ago, when he first set up shop, bought the business from an old friend. That’s when he first saw the guy who comes once a year. He’s well dressed, ridiculously so. Carl makes a decent living helping run the funeral home with his brother. Death and taxes, you know? Business is always booming. But he doesn’t know much about high fashion or stuff like that. He’s seen a lot of suits, though. Pretty standard attire at most funerals, so he can guess the suit must be the kind that’s handmade and costs far more than a mortgage payment.

The rich guy still probably gets all sorts of dirt on it, too nice for the mud and grass stains here.

But the guy comes. Comes once a year, and he brings three things: a bottle of wine, a brand Carl’s wife likes that’s very affordable and can’t possibly be Mr. Money Bags’ taste; a bouquet of two dozen roses; and of all the insane things, a giant spoon. Yes, a _spoon_. It’s long and carved and each time it’s got different patterns in it.

Most random thing he’s ever seen, at first.

But things get weirder, so weird that even though he knows Dale has seen him too, Carl won’t even say what he’s noticed out loud to his brother. Because it’s too crazy. Has to be. Been twenty years, and the guy never ages. Never really changes. And, yeah, it’s L.A. and everyone has a surgeon on speed dial. But, trust a mortician, eventually there’s no stitch or laser peel good enough to keep you young forever.

But not this man.

He never ages, he never drives up, and they never see him walk away. He just appears and vanishes as if it were nothing, like something out of that old kids’ book, _Harry Whosit_ or whatever. He was never into them, but his daughter recently started binge reading the kids classics and won’t shut up about Hogwarts.

So, one day, after over twenty years of this bizarre and terrifying spectacle (if the gifts weren’t tangible, he’d have assumed that the man really _was_ a ghost), Carl can’t help it. He knows the day, always knows it. For a while, he made sure to stick Dale with the shift so he wouldn’t have to see. But he can’t help being curious. So, he’s working and making some pretense this time of trimming the weeds by the plot. Not really something he has to pretend; it’s an old section of graves here, last one bought up and used some forty years ago.

But it’s like magic, like that Harry-book because he looks down for _an instant_ , feels the faintest of breezes, and there’s the man in a black suit that looks like a million bucks with a red silk pocket square and all his usual gifts. New spoon this year---they’re always different, he’s checked---and this man offers Carl a small smile.

“Hullo, don’t ever notice any of the workers out here when I pop by.” He’s pleasant enough, but there’s a strain around his eyes that betrays his friendly tone.

Carl swallows. “I…well, it’s not always glamorous owning the place.”

“I suppose not.” The man looks down at the grave.

Carl follows suit and notices the name on it, and there’s something about the surname, about _Morningstar_ that sounds like it should be familiar, like he’s heard it before somehow at one of the services on site they oversee, but he can’t quite place it. Well, it is L.A., everyone was famous for fifteen minutes, right? Maybe this Chloe was a star once, and he’s a fan. Granted, has to like _old_ movies if this were true. If this is all in Carl’s imagination, and the man isn’t a ghost---seems real standing here---then Chloe Morningstar died back when this guy couldn’t have been more than five.

Oh well, they do say that in Baltimore some dedicated fan leaves Poe a glass of brandy on his grave on his birthday. Maybe this is like that.

Nice for everyone to get remembered.

And yet…the man never ages, and Carl’s so sure of it, and he just has to ask, even if curiosity will be the death of him.

The man has gone back to focusing on the headstone, and he sets the wine down first, muttering to himself as if Carl wasn’t watching all of it, about how this swill will never be worth it. Then, he places the roses next to the bottle and lastly, kneels low to set the spoon on the top of the headstone.

The stranger reaches out and traces his fingers over the etched name in the granite, the definition in the carving has started to fade from time and weathering.

“Happy anniversary…I miss you.”

Carl frowns, and he knows this is probably suicidal and also rude as hell, but he has to know. So, he coughs. The man looks up at him and there’s the tiniest flash of something in his eyes, something red and fierce, but that has to be Carl’s imagination, doesn’t it?

“Sir, I…you come here every year.”

“Yes.”

“How long have you come? I mean, I bought this place almost twenty-five years ago, and I wish my buddy had mentioned you.”

“Do tell,” he says, standing up, and there’s an odd bit of amusement in his tone. “I’m hurt I wasn’t mentioned. I am _quite_ the feature.”

“I just…how many years have you been coming by?”

The man gestures to the gravestone and shrugs. “See that date.”

“Uh, yeah, _May 5, 2080_.”

“That’s when I bloody well started coming then.”

Carl blinks and feels the chill sweep up his spine, the hairs standing out all over his skin. “I, sir, to be fair that was over forty years ago, and you don’t look that old.”

“Oh, I’m not. I’m _far_ older than that,” he says, something almost hard seeping in through his jovial tone. “But you knew that.” The man sighs and eyes him. “So, I assume that means you know who I am and want a favor? Been a while, but I suppose for old times’ sake if next year it’s quiet around here.”

“No, I just…I thought I was going crazy because that makes no sense.”

The man smiled. “Oh, more things in heaven and Earth and all that rot, am I right? Mr. uh---”

“Winters.”

“Right, yes then,” the man replies. “Mr. Winters, I suppose I am a bit odd, been accused of far more in my time. However, I mean you no harm. Mean no one in your fine establishment any harm either. Honestly, you keep her grave better than the prick before you, and I appreciate that. She might be in the Silver City, but no need for her resting place to be a shambles. Never thought much of these stupid rituals of you humans, till now. But I do take the things I can get, which is of course, not a fraction of enough.”

Carl’s shaking by now because the word “humans” should never be thrown around so casually by a guy who’s supposed to be one of them, even if he _never fucking ages_.

Although they are in broad daylight so at least Carl’s not going to be eaten by a vampire, right?

“I…”

“But Mr. Winters, I’d like to offer you a deal. You’ve kept this place in tip top shape and, pathetic as it is, I’m grateful for that. If you promise to continue to let me come and have privacy as well as keep this plot in the best possible shape and make that same demand of any successor you have, then I’ll give you anything you’d like.”

This deal-making should be familiar too, and some part of Carl’s mind is trying to piece together what it is, but the gears in his brain feel as if they haven’t been oiled before.

“Sure,” he stutters. Because this man who isn’t a man is being nice, and Carl doesn’t want to know what happens when he _stops_ doing that. “I just was curious. Who are you?”

“That’s a very small price to ask. You ought to think bigger, man. Heart’s desire and all that.”

“Sure, I want the Hope diamond,” he bites back sarcastically because everything in this conversation is impossible. And yet the man never changes and soemthing is _wrong_.

The man chuckles. “They say that’s cursed but fair enough.”

“And I want your name,” Carl says, unsure if such a demand is wise, but he’s far fucking past taking the safe and smart off-ramp by now.

The man sighs. “Simple and done.” He holds out his hand and shakes Carl’s “Lucifer Morningstar, and I’d like a bit of time alone with my late wife if you don’t mind.”

Carl nods, feeling dizzy because all of this is crazy, and that surname is prickling at the back of his mind because it means something, but he doesn’t know _what_. He turns and hurries back to the funeral home because a deal is a deal, and he’s too scared of the man-who-isn’t to risk pissing him off, polite as he’s been so far.

But Carl’s curiosity gets the better of him one last time as he gets to the porch, and he looks out, like Lot’s wife, to the plots and sees two things: one fairly normal and one not even close. First, the man after kneeling in the dirt again in a suit that probably costs more than some cars, stands and pulls a small silver chain from his pocket and clenches it in his right hand. The light glints brightly against the chain, and that’s the only way Carl could have spied it from so far away. Second, bright white wings come from fucking nowhere. Just appear on the guy’s back. Not even tearing through the jacket, no Incredible Hulk bullshit here. All intact as if the wings had always been there.

The stranger, one Lucifer Morningstar, turns and arches and eyebrow toward Carl before beating his wings and disappearing entirely.

Carl goes home immediately, telling his brother he’s sick (and he probably is or crazy or both), and stays there for a week. When he gets back to work, there’s a package on his desk from an L. Morningstar that’s heavier than he expects, not that he expected a package at all. With shaking hands, Carl opens the cardboard box and his jaw drops at the blue diamond, almost the size of a damn baseball, nestled there.

There’s a note too, and he yanks that out:

_Mr. Winters:_

_I trust you will honor your terms as I have delivered on mine. Next May, I’d appreciate the quiet. Enjoy the diamond, but do be careful, as I have on good authority the curse is real, but you asked, and I delivered._

_-L.M._

The next year, Carl doesn’t dare go out there, makes sure _no one_ on staff is around but him just to ensure that Lucifer Morningstar has the entire day at the site alone, and, afterwards, when the man-who-isn’t is gone, Carl clears up the gifts left behind and shunts the spoon off with the forty-four others. He doesn’t think Morningstar will ever stop visiting, but before he retires, even if that’s probably yet another thirty years off, he will ask the man-who-isn’t if he wants any of the gifts back, seems like a shame to just leave such well-carved pieces in a trunk in the funeral home’s basement after all.

But that’s not for Carl to decide and, hopefully, not something he has to ask the Devil face-to-face for a very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "Poe Toaster" is/was a very real phenomenon - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/who-was-poe-toaster-we-still-have-no-idea-180961820/


End file.
